Bas de Leede stands in the middle of Himbleton cricket club, glowing in September’s last-gasp evening light. He has been driven there by Sam the photographer, who took one look at the Premier Inn off the M5 where De Leede was staying with Durham, and sought something more rustic.
The next day, he’s at a rainy New Road, part of the vibrant Durham side who have stormed to Division One promotion and can clinch the Division Two title in their penultimate game against Worcestershire. In between nibbling his nails in the field, he takes the one wicket to fall on a truncated day. At the end of the game, he flies out to India to join the rest of the Dutch World Cup squad.
De Leede, 23, the second of six children, is the son of the Dutch legend Tim and cousin of the Netherlands female player Babette. His uncle Patrick works for the KNCB and his brother Tom is a promising player coming up on the inside. “Dutch cricket is a small world,” he says with a trademark smile.
On 6 July, De Leede became an Orange star when he orchestrated a heist over Scotland in the men’s World Cup qualification tournament, becoming only the fifth player in one-day international history to make a century and take five wickets in a game as the Netherlands chased down 277 inside 44 overs to snatch qualification. In the process they knocked out Scotland, and qualified above Zimbabwe, West Indies and Ireland.
De Leede’s five for 52 and flamboyant and fearless 123 off 92 balls wasn’t news to Marcus North, Durham’s director of cricket, who had called him “arguably the most exciting all-rounder in associate cricket” when he signed for the club. But De Leede is remarkably modest about it all.
“Hopefully we didn’t use up all our good cricket against Scotland,” he says. “I’m excited about it. The 50-over World Cup is so different compared to the T20 World Cup. For us it feels like the biggest thing we can be part of.”
He has no truck with the current narrative that 50-over cricket is dying. “I think the format has the potential to be the best format, it has the ebbs and flows of Test cricket but also has the power and skills of T20 cricket. I think it is almost the best of both worlds, but that’s me as a Dutchie! There just hasn’t been enough context to it. If I was a supporter, I would lose interest as well. I’d rather watch something that meant something rather than just a random bilateral series.”
Anyone who tunes into the World Cup will get a chance to see what the Dutch coach Ryan Cook is calling Total Cricket. “He [Cook] did some research into Johan Cruyff, and he tries to integrate it into our cricket. What he means is that everyone compliments the other players in the team.
“There is a lot of analysis, we try to focus on things other teams wouldn’t necessarily do. A big thing in the qualifiers was running twos, we wanted to run 20 twos in every game – I think in the West Indies game we did something stupid like 34 twos, whereas in a normal T20 there would be 12. These things may not look big but give you extra energy as a batter and a team. He makes us play as one, like Cruyff tried to do with total football.”
There will be challenges for the Netherlands, the only associate nation in a 10-team round-robin tournament before the top four teams move to the semi-finals. ”I think spin is the biggest step up ... You can get used to the pace, but with the spin, the accuracy and the mystery and the way they think about the game, they always seem to be one step ahead.”
But for now his heart is still with Durham. He signed a two-year contract at the start of the season, able to play as a local because he’d applied for pre-settled status and encouraged by Ryan Campbell, his old Netherlands coach, now at Chester-le-Street. Despite a year with the MCC Young Cricketers, it was a step into the unknown.
“When I spoke to people about Newcastle and Durham they were all very positive about it, but I didn’t know what to expect at all. I didn’t know it was that far away from the rest of the country. It’s been very cool. The only bad thing is that it has been raining the whole summer but apparently that’s a one-off – but I’ll believe it when I see the sun shining next year.
“Trying to adapt my game to four-day competition is a nice challenge that I’ve really enjoyed.” He tops the Durham batting averages, and made his maiden first-class century against Sussex: “It was a goal I’d written down this year, so its nice to have ticked that off.”
Tim, who played second XI county cricket but was never signed, saw his debut match against Yorkshire, arriving just too late for the cap ceremony.
Bas has dipped his toe in franchise cricket for MI Emirates, but for now is committing to Durham. “I want to pay them back for trusting me.” In his time off, he’s studying business administration in Rotterdam, enjoys cooking – trying to perfect a spaghetti carbonara – and enjoys padel (a mixture of tennis and squash) “which hasn’t really hit Newcastle yet – I enjoy being busy with something else other than cricket”.
As the moment there isn’t much time for anything else, but he is happy. “I’m playing what I love and a lot of it,” he says, as he finishes his glass of Coke.
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