Associate players are picking county cricket over the World Cup Qualifier. And why shouldn't they?

Next Tuesday in Harare, Netherlands will play Zimbabwe in their opening game of the 2023 World Cup Qualifier, a ten-team tournament from which only two sides will go on to the main event in India in October.

Netherlands' entire bowling attack will be unavailable. When they beat South Africa in Adelaide in last year's T20 World Cup, the first five bowlers they used were Fred Klaassen, Paul van Meekeren, Colin Ackermann, Roelof van der Merwe and Brandon Glover; none of them will be involved in Harare. Nor will two other experienced seamers: Shane Snater and Timm van der Gugten.

Why? "It's pretty simple," says van Meekeren. "At the end of the day, the questions I ask myself are, 'Who is going to pay my bills? How can I be a professional cricketer for as long as I can?' And the answer is: county cricket. That is what puts bread on the table."

Van Meekeren will follow events in Harare from over 5000 miles away, from his flat in the UK. Later that night he hopes to play for Gloucestershire against Hampshire in the Vitality Blast. He has only featured once for the club this season but has recently diagnosed - and fixed - a "little bug" in his action, and is targeting a recall.

The prospect of leaving the competition at this stage to go to the qualifier seemed unpalatable. Van Meekeren is in the final year of his contract with Gloucestershire and his performances in the Blast will likely determine whether he earns a deal for 2024.

"If I have a decent Blast, I might secure another year or two where I can be a professional cricketer," he says. "If not, I might move back to the Netherlands where there are a couple of contracts waiting - but most of those contracts are semi-professional at best."

It is a situation which, in theory, should never occur. Long-established ICC regulations dictate that the release of players by domestic teams to play for Associate national teams in world events - or against Full Members - "shall be mandatory" and that "any contractual provisions agreed with a player must be consistent with these requirements". The regulations also state that "international cricket must be given primacy and protected and promoted above all else".

But in practice, money wins. "If they forced me to play for the Dutch team at times that really doesn't work in my schedule, I'd retire from Dutch cricket," van Meekeren says. "And most guys would. The 'mandatory release' doesn't really work for us: I'd happily retire from international cricket - and then when my county stuff is done, I would un-retire."

The ICC - which did not offer a comment when contacted by ESPNcricinfo - believes that it is the responsibility of Full Members to relay requirements around mandatory release to domestic teams. The ECB's stance is that it is signed up to the ICC's regulations and therefore supports them - but that players, counties and Associate boards should be left to work through the issues themselves, given each case is subtly different. That makes the regulations not worth the paper that they are written on.

It is a situation familiar to other teams at the World Cup Qualifier. Scotland are without Brad Currie, Josh Davey and Michael Jones, who will be with Sussex, Somerset and Durham respectively; Brad Wheal has a stress fracture but would likely have prioritised county over country. Ian Holland, Wheal's Hampshire team-mate, is also missing from USA's squad.

Those who follow Associate cricket closely will recall that at the last World Cup Qualifier, back in 2018, the same circumstances arose. In the years since, the success of Associate nations has been a highlight of consecutive men's T20 World Cups - and yet absolutely nothing has changed in terms of player release.

"In a perfect world, this stuff wouldn't happen," says Ryan Campbell, who joined Durham ahead of this season after spending six years as Netherlands coach, during which he battled with counties over player availability. "In the perfect world, all the Associate players would play for their countries every time.

"But the cold, hard facts of the day are that those Associate players can't make a living playing for their national teams, but they can in the county system. The facts are, as counties, we're their full-time employers. It's no disrespect to the Dutch, but their livelihoods come first."

There are troubling implications for international cricket. Franchises are discussing year-round contracts with players, and the primacy of bilateral tours has already been eroded. Imagine a case where, in five years' time, a Full-Member board is unable to secure a player for a major tournament because their franchise would rather keep them fresh for the next IPL. Counties have set a precedent.

For Associates, the issue comes down to funding. It is lost on nobody that the Qualifier is taking place at a time when the ICC's revenue distribution model for the 2024-27 cycle is being discussed. Under existing proposals, revealed by ESPNcricinfo, the 94 Associate members would share $67.16 million over four years - just under 30% of the $231 million that would go to the BCCI.

"The pie is getting bigger. That's a fact, with all the TV money. But it seems like we're just getting a smaller slice of the pie," van Meekeren says. "There's so many stories of the smaller teams pushing - and beating - the bigger teams, and if you give them a little bit more money, you will see that more and more. You'd be looking at 13 or 14 teams that can compete against each other, instead of eight or nine."

Campbell brought two Netherlands players to Durham - Glover and Bas de Leede - over the winter, and also has two Scotland players in his squad, Michael Jones and Tomas Mackintosh. De Leede and Mackintosh will be in Zimbabwe next week, but Glover and Jones will be playing in the Blast.

"Bas is a very proud Dutchman who has spent his whole career representing Netherlands," Campbell says. "He asked us before he signed if he could go and represent them in the Qualifier and we - myself and Marcus North [director of cricket] - were very open to that. We're investing in Bas as a potential ten-year player for Durham. Hopefully he'll go away, do well and then come back and do just as well for us.

"For young T-Mac, it should be a great experience, and he needs to play more cricket. Whereas for Jonesy and Glover, they came to us and were very clear that T20 was a massive part of them playing for Durham, and also for their personal careers. They were very keen to make sure that they would stay and play for us."

Campbell's perspective is unique: "I've been on both sides of the coin - and to be honest, I feel bad for both parties. I can understand the Dutch would obviously love to have all of their players, but it's just not going to happen."

He also points out that de Leede is the "very last Dutch player this will happen to… no more Dutch players will ever play county cricket, because of Brexit".

De Leede qualifies as a local player in county cricket, earning "pre-settled" status after spending a summer with MCC Young Cricketers in 2019, before the UK's exit from the European Union; the next generation of Dutch cricketers will be deemed overseas players, who must compete for one of two spots for such cricketers in each county XI. This means, in theory that Netherlands could field full-strength squads, but on the flip side, their players will not benefit from the professionalism of county cricket.

The Dutch board, the KNCB, has eight men's players on central contracts, while Cricket Scotland has 14, but the contracts are not worth enough for most players. Mark Watt, the Scotland spinner, says: "Until we become a nation like Ireland, where they can afford contracts to secure the county players, it's just going to have to be county first before Scotland. People have got families to provide for."

Watt himself has managed to juggle county cricket and his Scotland commitments, only rarely missing international fixtures in order to play for Derbyshire. "It all comes down to [Derbyshire head of cricket] Mickey Arthur," he says. "He understands that I'm very patriotic and want to be playing for Scotland as much as I can. He knows what it means for players to play for their country."

It is not that the players missing the Qualifier do not care. "As a homegrown player, born and raised in the Netherlands, it's not nice to miss these games," van Meekeren says. "Growing up, the only thing you imagined was playing for the Dutch team and trying to help them qualify for World Cups.

"But for the last six or seven years that I've been in the UK, that has changed a little bit. You can't live at your parents' forever. You have to pay rent, and at the end of the day, I need to pay my bills. I can do that here at Gloucestershire; and at the moment, the KNCB can't really come close to that."

Campbell wonders at the sense of sharing the international revenue so unequally. "It seems the big teams - the teams that actually don't need the money - are going to get all of the money. World Cups shouldn't be a symbol of our elitism; they should be a symbol of what we want the game to be, and that's the most popular sport in the world.

"When you are reducing 50-over World Cups to ten teams, mate, I'm sorry: you're not pushing out the right message. Football, rugby union, you name it - their World Cups have got bigger and bigger and will continue to. Whereas ours? It has only got smaller."

In Scotland's case, Watt believes they are "doing all we can with the funding we're given". He says: "It's pretty frustrating. It seems like we keep ticking all the boxes, beating Full Members, qualifying for World Cups. Hopefully things will change and we can get that extra funding, more facilities, more lucrative contracts and start to go in the right direction."

But nobody involved in Associate cricket is holding their breath. In 2007, the men's World Cup featured 16 teams. This year, for the second edition in a row, it will feature only ten - and the smaller nations will have to try and qualify with their best players unavailable. Damningly, there seems to be little appetite from the top to do anything about it.