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-round

cricketer Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by st ...

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 sp ...

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 A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World Cup ...

Domestic career

Having appeared in minor matches for the Netherlands since 1972, Lubbers came to

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in 1978 and played once for the

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second XI and seven times for

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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

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. 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 ...

in a shock three-run victory at

Amstelveen Amstelveen () is a List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Holland, Netherlands with a population of 92.353 as of 2022. It is a suburban part of the Amsterdam metropolitan ar ...

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

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and

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, 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 t ...

(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

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; in all three games where he passed 50, the Netherlands reached at least 250. In the

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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. Lan ...

match against

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he had Alan Fordham

caught and bowled Caught is a method of dismissing a batsman in cricket. A batsman is out caught if the batsman hits the ball, from a legitimate delivery, with the bat, and the ball is caught by the bowler or a fielder before it hits the ground. If the ball ...

for 99, although the Dutch still lost by seven wickets.

Retirement

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

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, 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. ...

. (This was actually the second wicket to fall, as

Nathan Astle Nathan John Astle (born 15 September 1971) is a former New Zealand cricketer, who played all formats of the game. A right-handed batsman who played as an opener in One Day Internationals (ODI), while batting in the middle order in Test matches ...

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 bef ...

.) 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 southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring count ...

crushed the Dutch by 160 runs at

Rawalpindi Rawalpindi ( or ; Urdu, ) is a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan. It is the fourth largest city in Pakistan after Karachi, Lahore and Faisalabad, and third largest in Punjab after Lahore and Faisalabad. Rawalpindi is next to Pakistan's ...

After cricket

Lubbers now works as a gymnastics teacher at a

Deventer Deventer (; Sallands: ) is a city and municipality in the Salland historical region of the province of Overijssel, Netherlands. In 2020, Deventer had a population of 100,913. The city is largely situated on the east bank of the river IJssel, ...

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 ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lubbers, Steven 1953 births Living people Netherlands One Day International cricketers Dutch cricket captains Sportspeople from Deventer Knights of the Order of Orange-Nassau Dutch cricketers