Steven Willem Lubbers (born 24 April 1953) is a former
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
all-roundcricketer and the first ODI captain for Netherlands. A right-handed batsman and right arm
off-break
Off spin is a type of finger spin bowling in cricket. A bowler who uses this technique is called an off spinner. Off spinners are right-handed spin bowlers who use their fingers to spin the ball. Their normal delivery is an off break, which spi ...
bowler who captained the national side for some years and was the first man to take a wicket for the Netherlands in a One Day International.
Domestic career
Having appeared in minor matches for the Netherlands since 1972, Lubbers came to
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
in 1978 and played once for the
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...
second XI and seven times for
Derbyshire
Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...
seconds, but failed to break through to the first team and never played
first-class cricket
First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officia ...
, hindered by the fact that Dutch cricketers were back then considered overseas players, which was turned around a couple of years later.
International career
His first internationals were in the
1979 ICC Trophy
The 1979 ICC Trophy was a limited overs cricket tournament held in England between 22 May and 21 June 1979. It was the inaugural ICC Trophy tournament to be staged, with matches between the 15 participating teams played over 60 overs a side and w ...
, in which he appeared three times without any particular success. He also did little in the 1982 competition, but in the 1986 tournament he took 12 wickets at 19.75 and scored a fifty against
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
.
He became captain of the Dutch team in 1988, playing in the side that hosted an England XI the following year and taking the wickets of John Stephenson and
Alec Stewart
Alec James Stewart (born 8 April 1963) is an English former cricketer, and former captain of the England cricket team, who played Test cricket and One Day Internationals as a right-handed wicket-keeper-batsman. He is the fourth-most- capped E ...
Amstelveen
Amstelveen () is a municipality in the province of North Holland, Netherlands with a population of 92.353 as of 2022. It is a suburban part of the Amsterdam metropolitan area.
The municipality of Amstelveen consists of the historical villages ...
in the first of the two matches. A reasonable
1990 ICC Trophy
The 1990 ICC Trophy was a limited-overs cricket tournament held in the Netherlands between 4 June and 23 June 1990. It was the fourth ICC Trophy tournament to be staged, and the first to be held outside England. It was also the first ICC Trophy co ...
followed, and he led two tours of England in
1991
File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the Phi ...
and 1992, playing a total of eight minor games against
county
A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...
opposition, although seven were lost and one ruined by rain.
A good
1994 ICC Trophy
The 1994 ICC Trophy (formally the ABN AMRO ICC Trophy) was a cricket tournament that took place in Kenya between 12 February and 6 March 1994. It was the fifth ICC Trophy tournament to be staged, and acted as the Cricket World Cup qualification to ...
(310 runs at 44.28, 10 wickets at 22.00) saw Lubbers make three half-centuries, including 81 in the third-place play-off victory over
Bermuda
)
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, song_type = National song
, song = "Hail to Bermuda"
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; in all three games where he passed 50, the Netherlands reached at least 250. In the
1995
File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The Great Hanshin earthquake str ...
NatWest Trophy
The Friends Provident Trophy was a one-day cricket competition in the United Kingdom.
It was one of the four tournaments in which the eighteen first-class counties competed each season. They were joined by teams from Scotland and Ireland. La ...
match against
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire (; abbreviated Northants.) is a county in the East Midlands of England. In 2015, it had a population of 723,000. The county is administered by
two unitary authorities: North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire. It is ...
Lubbers ended his international career on a high note at the 1996 World Cup, where the Netherlands played their first ever ODIs. In the first of these, against
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
at
Baroda
Vadodara (), also known as Baroda, is the second largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It serves as the administrative headquarters of the Vadodara district and is situated on the banks of the Vishwamitri River, from the state capital ...
, he took the first ever ODI wicket by a Dutchman when
Craig Spearman
Craig Murray Spearman (born 4 July 1972) is an English-New Zealand former cricketer who played 19 Tests and 51 One Day Internationals for New Zealand from 1995–2001.
He took his education from Kelston Boys High School, Auckland and then to Ma ...
was caught by
Bas Zuiderent
Bastiaan Zuiderent (born 3 March 1977) is a former Dutch international cricketer. He is a right-handed batsman and a right-arm medium-pace bowler. He is one of very few Dutchmen, to have appeared in six International Cricket Council events.
In ...
. (This was actually the second wicket to fall, as Nathan Astle had earlier been
run out
Run out is a method of dismissal in cricket, governed by Law 38 of the Laws of Cricket.
A run out usually occurs when the batsmen are attempting to run between the wickets, and the fielding team succeed in getting the ball to one wicket be ...
.) He struggled with batting, not scoring significant amounts in four attempts. His final game for his country was against South Africa, where Lubbers scored 2 not out and conceded 50 runs from eight wicketless overs as
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...
Lubbers now works as a gymnastics teacher at a Deventer high school named Etty Hillesum Lyceum De Boerhaave.
In 2021 he was made a Knight of the
Order of Oranje-Nassau
The Order of Orange-Nassau ( nl, Orde van Oranje-Nassau, links=no) is a civil and military Dutch order of chivalry founded on 4 April 1892 by the queen regent, Emma of the Netherlands.
The order is a chivalric order open to "everyone who has ...
.
Sports family
Steven Lubbers is the father of Dutch Olympic rower
Reinder Lubbers
Reinder Lubbers (born 6 November 1984 in Deventer) is a male rower from the Netherlands.
The son of former Dutch cricket team captain Steven Lubbers, Lubbers took part in the World Championships of 2007 in Munich becoming fifth in the coxed fo ...