A cricket connection.

...the bonding that the game affords to a bunch of men condemned to be sporting exiles in their new home in the US. Hans does not appear to be obsessed about international cricket scores; he is concerned mainly, with playing the game, partly to assuage the loneliness of the jilted lover, partly to reconnect with his Dutch childhood, and partly, to re-establish the kind of physical connection that a great game can build with us.

Here you go for Samir Chopra's review on Joseph O'Neil's Netherland.