BABETTE’S FEAST – Netherlands captain Babette de Leede is hungry for success 

As the Netherlands team prepare for their maiden T20 World Cup, their inspirational leader Babette de Leede tells Helen M Jerome about dodgy pitches and sudden progress, exposure and motivation… and their secret advantage as underdogs.

Wicketkeeper, right-handed batter and captain of the Netherlands since 2024, Babette de Leede has cricket in her DNA. Both her uncle Tim de Leede, and cousin Bas de Leede, represented the Dutch men’s team in World Cups.

She made her international debut aged just 14, and was the second ever Dutch woman to turn professional in cricket. Half the year she plays in the South Africa franchise league, the other half she’s back home. Win-win! Meanwhile, she’s also managed to get a master’s degree in marketing and business.

You can mark the progress of this Netherlands team from the beginning of 2025 when de Leede led them to four victories in six T20 matches in Kathmandu, Nepal, including three against the host nation and one against Thailand.

Then at the start of 2026 she led them to an incredible five consecutive victories, which ensured they punched their ticket and qualified for the upcoming T20 World Cup.

Babette de Leede is hungry to experience this tournament and eager to get going… and she can hardly contain her excitement as she speaks to The New Women’s Sport Magazine exclusively ahead of the Netherlands’ debut at the T20 WWC…

You have quite a lot of cricketers in the family – including your cousin Bas (below, left) and uncle Tim (below, right) – so do they give you lots of advice all the time?

No, not at all actually.

My uncle, Tim, is actually our assistant coach with the women’s team.

So he is involved, and he shares a lot of his experience.

But when we are at family gatherings, dinners, we try to avoid work!

You were only 14 years old when you made your international debut (see team photo below, with Babette bottom right). And I wonder if you could tell me about the changes and progress you’ve seen in that time.

There’s a lot has changed in a good way.

When I started, we had to pay for our own tours.

So even when we played World Cup qualifiers or we used to play in the ECB in England, we all had to pay ourselves.

And we could only train once a week because everyone was working and our coach was not full-time.

So it was quite tough, very amateur.

I think when I started, the team was a bit older.

And then I would say every year, maybe three, four players quit because they wanted to have children or they wanted to have leave days at work, not for cricket. Whereas now we’re still not fully professional, but some of us have contracts, and we have a full-time coach.

We have the opportunity to train every day and with really good facilities because back then we trained in the most ridiculous place, not even made for cricket.

They just turned it into a cricket net where we had to use tennis balls because we would ruin the boxes or whatever, like storage rooms.

And it was crazy. Even in schools, we’ve seen it all.

Yeah, I think we’ve come a long, long way.

But unfortunately, we’re still not professional players for the Netherlands.

I’m lucky to have a professional contract in South Africa.

So I can play the whole year round and they pay my full-time salary, and then the Netherlands pays me when I’m on tour with them.

So at least we don’t have to pay for ourselves anymore.

What about little things like having your own cricket uniforms. Presume when you started out, you just had hand-me-downs?

Yeah, we didn’t have our names on our shirts.

So you had to rotate your shirt.

It was very, very amateur.

As captain, you must have ambitions as to where this Netherlands team can go?

Yeah, I think over the last two, three years, we have improved a lot.

In our previous World Cup qualifier, we didn’t come close to qualifying at all.

Then we got a new coach and all of us said: okay, we really want to qualify for the next one or so.

At our previous World Cup qualifiers, there were only two teams that qualified, whereas now there’s four.

So I think that really helped.

We all had the same goal.

And now we’ve actually made it to the World Cup… but we do want to compete.

We don’t want to be like: oh, we made it, that’s fine for now.

So we really want to beat some teams.

We want to finish in the top eight so we don’t have to qualify again.

That would basically mean winning two games in our group stage, which I really think we can do.

We’ve trained really hard.

We’re in season here.

We’re playing in our home conditions, because England is very similar to the Netherlands.

I think we have some advantage also as a newcomer.

They don’t really know us, and our games don’t get televised, so good luck with preparing!

When you were starting out in cricket, why did you choose to be a wicket keeper?

I was just bored in the field.

I like to be involved, and I did bowl as well.

I was a bowler when I was younger.

But I just love to have the ball all the time.

And as a keeper, you’re not just catching a lot more balls than the fielders, but also you see how the bowlers are bowling, how the fielders are fielding.

You’re a lot more involved in the game.

Whereas I love fielding, and fielding training is the best training there is.

But in the game, you just don’t get the ball.

Yeah, and if you’re fielding the boundary it’s fun, but you’re so far away from the action.

So I really like to be close to the action and be busy the whole time.

What does this T20 World Cup mean to you? How hungry are you to show what the Netherlands can do?

It’s an incredible opportunity.

Especially for us as associate players, as we don’t get the opportunity to play against the big teams in the world.

We’ve never played against any top eight teams in the world.

And we don’t get the opportunity in franchise cricket because our games don’t really get televised.

So especially because we don’t earn a full-time salary, it would be great if some of us could get some exposure and get picked up by franchise teams.

Even as rookie players or associate players, I think it’s huge.

Also to be able to just measure yourself against the best in the world, see how they play, even have the conversations with them before or after games.

I think it’s incredible for us to have this opportunity and we will learn a lot from it.

And yeah, hopefully we can call some upsets and get some exposure and get our cricket to the next level as well.

How would you describe the Netherlands cricket style?

I would say fearless.

Because also, we are the underdog, we are the lowest ranked team, we have nothing to lose.

And I think we have some very powerful hitters up front and down the order as well.

We have a lot of talent in the team.

And even our bowlers, I think they bowl with a plan.

They’ll try to bowl bouncers or slower bowl.

They’re not scared to try stuff or think: oh no, I’m bowling against one of the best batters in the world. Let me hold back a bit now.

I think we’re going to go all in and give it our 100%.

What’s your first memory of a cricket World Cup?

My first memory of a World Cup, I watched the final at Lord’s a few years ago, in 2017, between India and England, which was a great game.

It was really cool to be at Lord’s, watch that game.

That would be my first memory, really, because before that I didn’t really watch a lot of cricket.

Before I was 18, I was busy and I had other interests as well.

But after that I got really into cricket.

How do you feel about the T20 compared to other formats? I presume it suits the Netherlands.

Yeah, I think the shorter the game, the more action, the more chance you have to win.

Personally, I love 50-overs and I would love to play a test one day.

But I think, yeah, T20, anything can happen, even in England in the rain sometimes.

We might end up playing T10.

So yeah, it’s really cool, very exciting, a lot of action.

Yeah, I guess you never know, in a T20 anything can happen.

Do you think people might underestimate you because you’re the outsiders?

I think so, yeah. Also we’re the unknown team.

We’ve never played at a World Cup.

And there’s not a lot of footage on our games.

So I think that could be an advantage, whereas we have a lot of data, a lot of access to a lot of games of the bigger teams.

In Group A you have some of the favourites, so are there particular opponents you’re looking forward to playing against?

For me personally, I think South Africa is going to be very special because I play domestic cricket in South Africa and I know a lot of the girls quite well.

Some of them used to be my teammates or are my teammates.

For me that’s going to be special.

I think also because we play that game in Bristol, we’ll have a lot of supporters from home watching us.

So for me that will be the one I’ll look forward the most.

I presume you know some of the South African players better than some of your teammates?

No, I wouldn’t say that because the Netherlands is so small and we’re all roughly from the same area, we train every week together.

We don’t need training camps, whatever, we just train as a team every week.

So I know my teammates a lot better here and I’ve also known them for a long time.

We kind of stuck together maybe for five, six years now.

So now I know my Dutch teammates better.

So you’re still playing in the South African franchise league?

Yes, and it’s winter there now.

So it works out perfectly.

I go back there in August.

And then the summer starts.

I play until March, April, and then I come back here.

So I live in summer the whole year, play cricket the whole year, living the dream.

How do you feel about playing in some of these big iconic cricket grounds? I think the main one for you is Edgbaston.

Yeah, that’s our first one as well.

No, I’m very excited, and hopefully we’ll have a crowd in.

And it’s just great to play in stadiums.

I think especially as associate cricketers, we usually play on dodgy pitches and batting is never that easy, and it’s turning and nipping.

Yeah, sometimes 120 is a good score and I don’t really like that type of cricket, especially because I’m a batter.

So I’m very excited to play on flat wickets and hopefully with a big orange army.

Have you played on any of those grounds before?

No, I haven’t. I’ve trained at Lords, which was quite special.

But I haven’t played in any of the English stadiums.

You mentioned the orange, you’re even wearing orange at the moment, aren’t you?

Yeah!

Whatever the sport is, whether it’s football, rugby, whatever, there’s always orange followers (behind Sterre Kalis, below!).

Do you get a sense that there are going to be a lot of travelling fans?

Yeah, well, our family and friends will come!

A lot of them, because we’ve never played at a World Cup, they know how hard we worked for this and how special this is, but also a lot of people from the Dutch cricket community.

Because it’s so close and because we’ve never been to a World Cup and we’re all from the Netherlands, which also quite special.

We all grew up here, we all played cricket here our whole life.

So yeah, I expect a lot of people, a lot of support.

Everyone is already really, really proud and excited.

And yeah, it’s going to be really cool to have to have them there.

How would you describe the progress you’ve made as the Netherlands? Because I don’t think many people would have expected you to be where you are now.

Oh, we’ve made a lot of progress.

I think in the last two, three years we’ve gotten a lot better.

I think our last qualifier in 2024 we ended up maybe fifth or sixth.

We didn’t do that well.

We’d never even been close to qualifying.

So from my first qualifier in 2015 until 2024, we never reached a semi-final or anything.

But after that one in 2024, we said: okay, we really want to qualify for the next one.

Also players who did not really commit, they quit.

So we ended up with a strong, very motivated group and said, okay, this is what we’re going to do.

This is how we’re going to train.

We got in a good match programme as well from the KNCB (the Royal Dutch Cricket Federation).

We got all the support.

And yeah, we did it.

We, especially in the qualifier itself, we won our first five games.

So we qualified with two games left to play, which was the dream scenario for us, but also very strange, especially because we had never been close to qualifying at all.

Now we qualified as a second team after Bangladesh and the rest still needed to play.

It was very cool.

Apart from the fact that you’re all very motivated, is there anything else about maybe the style of play or some new players? Anything that made you reach that other level?

I think our team is very close.

Because we’re not getting paid to play, it really comes from your heart and your passion for the game.

And we really enjoy playing together.

We play for each other… and I feel when it’s your job, the dynamic changes a little bit.

So that’s why I really enjoy being captain of this group is because we all love this game so much, we would do anything, we sacrifice a lot.

And we understand each other very well, because we all have other jobs or studies on the side.

And I think a lot of people don’t understand the decisions that we make.

For example, my studies, the people didn’t understand why I would train so much and didn’t get better grades.

I was like: oh, because I want to play cricket, I don’t want to study the whole day.

I think that’s why we’re such a close group, even off the field we’re friends, and I think it’s unique.

When we look at the squad that’s coming over here, are there any young players or emerging stars that we should look out for?

Yeah, our second keeper, it’s her first time she’s been called up, Rosalie Lawrence.

She has improved a lot the last winter, she’s a great keeper.

She’s scoring a lot of runs at the moment.

So she is very exciting.

Also Lara Leemhuis.

She’s turning 18 in the World Cup.

She’s still at school.

Also, she wasn’t in the qualifiers.

She’s very talented.

She’ll be really, really good.

A very nice person to have around the team as well.

Phebe Molkenboer is turning 21 this week, she is our opening batter.

She’s very, very, very solid.

And I forget sometimes she’s still only this young because she looks so mature when she bats.

I think those three are three young players to look out for.

How does it feel to have Heather Siegers (above) back in the team?

Oh, it’s amazing.

It was quite a stressful period when she announced she had to retire because she just couldn’t get off work just before the World Cup qualifiers.

Because she is our most experienced player in the team.

She’s great with the ball, with the bat in the field, she’s true around her true athletes.

So we were very relieved when eventually, after a lot of discussions with her work, she said she could come and she was very valuable as well in the qualifier.

So we’re very happy to have her.

And her sister also plays for you?

Yeah, Silver Siegers is our leg spinner.

Can you tell me a bit about your head coach, Neil McRae?

Yeah, he is from Scotland.

He was Jersey’s coach, and he actually signed another contract with them at the start of the year.

He was going to leave after our World Cup qualifier.

Then we qualified and he could, well, he could talk to, he spoke to Jersey, and they made an arrangement that he’ll stay with us until the World Cup.

So we appointed a new head coach [Pierre de Bruyn] in the meantime.

He will also be at the World Cup to observe and just as an extra pair of hands to get to know us and see how we go about things.

So it’s an exciting time and new has been really good for us.

We’re a bit sad to see him leave, but I also think the new coach will be really good and it’s a good time to invest in this team and get a new energy.

If you were going to try and persuade people who hadn’t been to a cricket match, can you say why they should come and watch the T20 World Cup?

I think it’s an unreal opportunity to see really good cricket.

I think especially women’s cricket in the last few years, the level has increased so much.

The games are super close.

A lot of runs are scored.

So especially if you are in Europe, this is a massive event that you don’t want to miss.

Finally, cricket has been very important in your life. And are there any life skills that cricket has taught you?

Planning.

Definitely planning, I think, especially when I was studying.

Yeah, it was hectic.

I’d study, train.

I wanted to see friends.

I wanted to explore the student life a little bit as well.

I wanted to play hockey.

It was just too much.

So I learned to plan, to say no to certain things.

I can’t do everything.

But also I think the game itself is quite humbling.

So one day you’ll be the hero, the next day back to zero.

And I think that’s beautiful about the game.

Also what I really like about cricket is that you could have the worst day of your life, but your team can still win. And the other way around.

So I love it that that is a team sport, but also a little bit individual.

You have your team, especially in the field, the energy and taking the field together as a unit is a great feeling.

But then also you have your own moments where you shine, and you can take the spotlight.

Cricket is a beautiful game.

Photos: ICC, Babette de Leede, Patrick de Leede

Netherlands T20 WWC fixtures:

Sunday 14th June 10.30: v Bangladesh, Edgbaston

Wednesday 17th June 14:30: v India, Headingley

Saturday 20th June 10:30: v Australia, Hampshire Bowl

Thursday 25th June 18:30: v South Africa, Bristol

Saturday 27th June 10.30: v Pakistan, Bristol

All matches live on Sky Sports.