Strathmore Cricket Union: the first 90 years a history 1928-2018

148 A new regulation was introduced at the AGM to tackle the growing problem of the ‘Pro’s Mate’, a player who was ostensibly an amateur but who often arrived with the professional and sometimes outplayed him. Probably the first example of this in the Union was the appearance in Brechin of Shish Hattangadi in 1986. Alongside professional Raju Kulkarni, the Indian pair were a formidable due and helped Brechin to push Arbroath all the way in the title race that season. Shish soon moved on to Forfarshire as professional and it became apparent that some form of control was required to prevent an invasion of ‘amateurs’ from abroad distorting the league in the favour of clubs with deep pockets or well-heeled supporters able to offer cricketers support either openly or covertly. The AGM passed a motion requiring any player who hadn’t lived in Scotland for at least twelve weeks of the calendar year outwith the months of May to August to be pre-registered with the Union before playing. The Committee was empowered to refuse registration if it was not satisfied with the player’s status. The rule was designed to enable students, holidaymakers and workers to play freely but to prevent obvious abuses. 1989 brought the decade to a close, and it was a good year for Dundee High School FP who won both the Championship and the Three Counties Cup, winning the final against Brechin with only two balls to spare. Strathmore XI won the Two Counties Cup. Jeremy Moir followed his twin brother Dallas into the Scotland team, winning the first of his 22 caps this year. The 1980s were not really dissimilar to previous decades, and there is a danger of ignoring all the fine cricket that was played. Defections, arguments, spite and all these things definitely happened but the main focus was simply good cricket, and there was a lot of that! The world outside was changing as well. It was of course the Thatcher decade with all the heartaches and angst that that brought for many, and cricket in general was going through a bad time with very few people in Scotland having any sort of vision for the future. The school teachers’ dispute of the mid 1980s was due to have a long lasting effect on the game, for as a result of this dispute, schools cricket took a long time to resume and when it did, it was on a truncated basis. Therefore fewer and fewer children left school with any real practical experience of playing the game. This would affect local cricket badly.