Strathmore and Perthshire Cricket Union Handbook 2010

23 INTRODUCTION TO FREUCHIE CRICKET CLUB by John Anderson One hundred years old in 2008, Freuchie Cricket Club has always been a typical village cricket club, a real focal point in the life of our village. We are unashamedly proud of our achievements in recent years, whether on the pitch, in the community or through our youth development programme. Our history is well charted in local historian Adrian Grant’s excellent book “90 Not Out,” published in 1998 to commemorate our ninetieth anniversary, with a particularly good account of our progress to triumph in the Village Cup final at Lord’s in 1985. We are fortunate in having all the club’s minute books dating back to 1908, together with many old photographs and other records; we are presently working on a DVD which we hope will complement Adrian’s book, covering the last ten years and having a bit more to say about activities on and off the field, and, if we can do it, video clips and interviews with notable members. We are particularly proud of our ‘home-grown’ players, two of them in the Scotland team in the 1990s, another a professional cricketer in England, yet others playing at various representative levels. Almost as important, we are blessed with the efforts of past players and present supporters, giving us one of the best clubhouses in Scotland, an award- winning groundsman and a park frequently chosen for junior internationals and ‘neutral ground’ matches. We are enthusiastic supporters of what Cricket Scotland terms “whole club development” – that cricket is a year-round activity, not just something for the summer months, with a real focus on youth development. Most sports clubs lose a proportion of their promising players as they reach mid to late teens, and we are no exception. However, we recognise that those who develop into adult players are most often those whose parents are involved with the club in one capacity or another. We work hard to make it a place for families - all the year round. We want to have these young players coming through, but also to hold on to the award-winning groundsmen of the future. Continued on page 25