The announced tour will no longer take place as Belgium squad wouldn’t be travelling to Netherlands for the series owing to ongoing travel restrictions in place. KNCB will instead be hosting a 3-match Pro Series on the same dates between select squads chosen for Seafarers and Hurricanes teams. Belgium Cricket Federation (BCF) had announced that the men’s national squad will be travelling to Netherlands to play against the Dutch “A” squad for a 4-match T20 series on June 24th and 25th, 2021.
The national squad, who have resumed training for the domestic season in Belgium starting in June 2021, were scheduled to play the matches at Voorburg Cricket Club (VCC) and Excelsior’20 grounds. Belgium national squad head coach Corey Rutgers, who is also coaching VOC Rotterdam in the Dutch domestic TopKlasse season in 2021, was instrumental in getting this series arranged after their original scheduled plan for April and May 2021 were postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic situation, preventing travelling from other countries.
The series was expected to prepare the national squad ahead of their bi-lateral series against Malta and Austria, scheduled to take place in July 2021. For Netherlands, the series was to provide more competitive games for the bench strength and national squad hopefuls, after a busy period in the past couple of months, which saw the national squad host Scotland and Ireland for ODI series, along with an “A” tour of Ireland. Now the players will play matches in both 50-overs and T20 formats to continue head coach Ryan Campbell’s plans for the upcoming T20 World Cup.
Pro Series Squads
Seafarers: Tony Staahl (Captain), Maxwell O’Dowd, Boris Gorlee, Tim de Kok, Pieter Seelaar, Aryan Dutt, Tobias Visee, Sebastian Braat, Philippe Boissevain, Julian de Mey, Kertan Nana and Victor Lubbers
Hurricanes: Scott Edwards (Captain), Musa Nadeem, Vikramjit Singh, Ben Cooper, Bas de Leede, Navjit Singh, Niels Etman, Clayton Floyd, Ryan Klein, Shariz Ahmad, Pierre Jacod and Arnav Jain
KNCB Pro Series 2021
24th June 2021 (50-overs): Seafarers vs Hurricanes @11am (Scorecard)
25th June 2021 (T20s): Seafarers vs Hurricanes @11am (Scorecard) and @3pm (Scorecard)
2 thoughts on “KNCB replace cancelled Belgian series with Pro Series in OD/T20 formats”
Corey Rutgers is coaching VOC Rotterdam, not VCC (Voorburg)
Thanks for the heads up. It was a typing mistake on our end and it has been updated now in the article.