From backyards to the big stage: Dutch stars look forward to ETPL era

There is something quietly stubborn about European cricket. It does not announce itself. It does not demand your attention. It simply persists, in club grounds and borrowed fields, carried forward by people who love it more than the game perhaps deserves. That, however, is about to change.

The European T20 Premier League arrives this August, the inaugural season of a professional men's Twenty20 league supported by Ireland, Netherlands and Scotland and it is hard to overstate what that means for Dutch stars Logan van Beek, Bas de Leede and Paul van Meekeren. Three cricketers, three very different beginnings, one dressing room, spoke regarding their childhood, love-affair with cricket and how they look forward to the upcoming tournament.

Logan's story begins furthest away, geographically and romantically. His grandfather played for the West Indies and for New Zealand, that rare man who gave two nations his best years. Logan grew up in that shadow, and he has never quite left it. "Every time I'd go to my grandparents, there'd be balls thrown at my face," he says, and laughs.

Backyard cricket until the sun went down. Cricket as inheritance, as love letter, as homecoming. He ended up in the Netherlands through Dutch heritage on his father's side, the irony being that his father never played sport at all. Some things skip a generation. Some things don't need to.

Bas de Leede arrived differently. His father, Tim de Leede, played for the Netherlands, and young Bas would be dragged along to matches, entirely uninterested in watching, entirely consumed by the desire to hit things.

Paul van Meekeren's story is almost identical: dad played, young Paul went along, and spent his time not watching cricket but demanding that someone throw him a ball. There is a theme here. These are not children seduced by the aesthetics of the game. They are children seized by its fundamental, physical joy. Paul came close to football, as any Dutch boy must. Around eleven or twelve, something shifted. He realised he was good. Player of the tournament at the U12 European Championship. From that point, as he says simply: "cricket, cricket, cricket."

All of which brings us to August, and to the question that animates all of this. The ETPL is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the cricket boards of Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands, a tournament designed not just to stage cricket but to make it visible, audible and impossible to ignore.

Van Meekeren understands the stakes better than most. "If we play the big teams, we see a lot of people who live on mainland Europe coming to the Netherlands wanting to watch the best in the world play," he says. "I would be upset if there wasn't a good crowd."

Van Beek puts the visibility problem plainly. “In New Zealand,” he explains, “...you drive past cricket grounds. You turn on the television and cricket is simply there, part of the furniture of summer. In the Netherlands, you have to go looking for it. The people who love the game here love it fiercely, but they have rarely had a way in.”

“Create a bit of noise, a bit of excitement,” van Beek adds. "Get some good players there, and get Dutch, Scottish and Irish players together, which we're already very competitive with each other."

European cricket is not undiscovered because the talent isn't there. It is undiscovered because the infrastructure of attention, television, crowds, noise, theatre, has never quite arrived.

Three words, when asked to finish a sentence about why European cricket is special. "Unique," says van Beek. "Undiscovered talent," says van Meekeren. "Diversity," says de Leede.

Diversity. That word lingers.

A man whose grandfather gave himself to two nations. A man following his father's footsteps. A man who nearly gave up cricket for football.

Same dressing room. Different roads in. The ETPL, if it does what it promises, will ensure a few more people find their way.