Sport

 

One of our national games

 

R D Kernohan

 

Alloa – where the Scottish game is said to have started
Photograph by Islay McLeod

 

As often happens with our national games, Scotland haven't made it to the finals of this year's World Cup: the cricket one which runs from mid-February to April. We shall therefore, as happens in Test matches, be eagerly supporting England in the crucial stages, even though they have never been at their best in the one-day version of the game. Earlier on we can lend a friendly cheer to Ireland who, as in Rugby, have coped better with changing ways in the game. But most Scottish TV viewers will have to be content with miserly BBC highlights of the matches in India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, for Sky has again bagged the live coverage. 
     I hope I have managed to pack a little provocation into these opening sentences.
     For I want to tease those who grudge us the sparse ration of cricket BBC TV now provides. I want to shame those who would drag into cricket the demeaning notion that Scots should support third parties against England. But, most important, I want to affirm the status of cricket as a Scottish national game, with more support, interest, and participation than is often realised both within Scotland and in the rest of the cricket-playing world. It is the economics of the game, not its popularity or even our climate, which have always ruled out our involvement at Test level or in the now rather decayed top gallery of English (and Glamorgan) county championship cricket.
     The way the game took root in the east of Scotland, long before it became fashionable in upper-range Edinburgh and Glasgow schools, does make me wonder if there was a slightly milder and drier climate then. Or perhaps what helped was the discovery that Scotland's long evenings in spring and early summer are ideal for limited-over cricket. The general assumption is that the game was brought by English workers and soldiers. The claim for the first authenticated Scottish match is at Alloa in 1785, in the age of England's 'Hambledon men' and just before the founding of the MCC, until recent times the international regulator of the game. Cricket reached Scotland about the same time as it first made an impact in Northern England.
     It's difficult to contrive an accurate estimate of the number of cricket-players, never mind cricket-lovers, in Scotland or how its following compares with that of  our other national sports – partly because it's such a widespread and locally-rooted Scottish game. There is a two-division national league of 32 clubs which has feeder leagues with just under 200 other teams (some of them subsidiaries or lesser-strings of big clubs). But there is also a Northern Association of good-class clubs with its strength around the Moray Firth and a range of minor leagues and 'grades', mid-week leagues, even an 'Orkney indoor league' and a Shetland association which arranges play on summer Sundays – unless, presumably, wind stops play. That would not be possible in Lewis, where I can't trace a cricket club, but I did once discover that the Free Kirk's best polemical theologian was a well-informed and surprisingly temperate enthusiast for the game.
     But to organised leagues and official structures must be added numerous minor clubs, sometimes occasional or ephemeral, playing friendly matches, together with schools cricket, and women's cricket (which also has a world cup). Even Sky Sport has never questioned women's understanding of the l.b.w. rule. I only cite figures to back the claim that the number of people in Scotland playing, umpiring, score-book keeping, or preparing for the tea interval compares well with active numbers in more publicised sports, for example the 240 clubs and 10,500 senior male players in Scottish Rugby.
      The vast majority are Scots by birth and descent, though there has always been a welcome for English and other immigrants – among them in modern times many players of Pakistani and Indian origin. (The sub-continent is now, even more than England, Australia, and the West Indies, at the heart of the world game and, measured by numbers, the source of its greatest support.)
     Because the Scottish game remains essentially and healthily social and amateur, despite a tradition of overseas professionals in bigger clubs, the Scots impact on world cricket has seemed fairly light. The national side, though missing out on this year's World Cup finals, gave a modest account of itself at the 2007 event in the West Indies (when a devoted travelling support, among them one of my sons, followed them to the unfashionable island of St Kitt's) and has a decent record in one-day internationals with other second-tier sides, English counties, and even Test-playing countries. But the impact of Scots on cricket is greater than that of the Scottish national team for Scots, as well as Scots-descended Englishmen (among them a great MacLaren and two notable Stewarts), have made their mark through English cricket, the most notable in recent times being Mike Denness, from Bellshill via Ayr, who played in 28 Tests for England and was captain 19 times,  
     There is also the case of Douglas Jardine, England's most controversial captain. To Australians, during the 1932-33 'bodyline' crisis over aggressive short-pitched leg-side fast bowling, he seemed the most arrogant type of 'Pom'. His dislike of Australians, heartily reciprocated, turned a mere dispute into a cricket crisis. But Jardine was not in modern terms, qualified for England by birth. He was born in India of Scots parents, sent 'home' to St Andrews, and eventually his ashes were scattered in Perthshire. Beneath the Winchester and Oxford veneer there seems to have been a mixture of Scots reserve and thrawnness – a good commanding officer as far as his professional troops were concerned but perhaps not an engaging personality.  
     There  have been various other Scottish Test players for England, though at the moment a couple of Irishmen are the main beneficiaries of the tradition, supported by all but a few ultra-Celtic girners, that any good cricketer in the British Isles should have the chance to play Test cricket for England and establish himself in the top tier. Five-day games for the Ashes or in India and South Africa are a more exacting examination of skill and character than cheerful scampers in one-day internationals, even in the World Cup, or slog-outs in the currently fashionable 20-overs-a-side variation.    
     But the real contribution of Scotland to cricket, and cricket to Scotland, is much more than the record of high-achievers and a respectable international side. It has been a people's game that has always brought together very different sorts and conditions of Scots. J M Barrie, Andrew Lang, and Conan Doyle gave it literary distinction. A MacKinnon of MacKinnon played is one of the earliest Test matches in Australia. Two Dukes of Buccleuch presided over the MCC and an Earl of Rosebery averaged 23 in first-class cricket before heading for the racecourse.
     The best Scottish batsman I remember was a minister and the game has always swarmed with teachers and solicitors, some of them still running between the wickets after they retired exhausted from labours in classroom and sheriff court. But it was a very assorted lot of  Freuchie Fifers who went to Lord's and won the British national village championship in 1985; and it is the country and small-town lads of  Mid-Scotland and the North-East who, much more than the Watsonians or Glasgow Academicals, come as near as anyone can to  'typical' Scottish cricketers.. 
     I shall miss them this year when Sky lets me see how the  50-overs-a-side World Cup is getting on and will cheer for England and (while they last) Ireland. It won't be as rich and subtle as a good Ashes series but it will be fun. A lot of Scotland will share in the fun and hope that our international side will be back there next time.

 

R D Kernohan is a writer and broadcaster and a former editor of the Church of Scotland's magazine Life and Work