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

159 professional. He had played for Meigle for 27 years and had been a fine consistent performer with an attractive array of shots. Theyear also sawthefirst doublecenturyever scored in theUnion. Brechin’s professional, Manoj Parmar, hit 213 at Guthrie Park, against Forthill XI, on 16th August, passing the previous record of 194* by Derick Kallacharran of Strathmore in 1985. The runs came out of an opening stand of 287. The following week, the Brechin openers put on 235 at Mannofield with Manoj contributing just 172. Change was clearly in the air as the century came to an end. Plans were formulated to change the structure from 1999 with a Premier League, then a First and Second Division. Possibly the idea of three Divisions was a good one but it did seem a shame that the Union had to ape football and use words like “Premier”. But this was for 1999. 1998 would be the last season of the old Division One and Division Two. Increasingly there was a problem getting youngsters to play the game, and this was reflected in the pessimistic tone of the Strathmore Union yearbooks at about this time. The problems all stemmed from the teachers’ industrial action of the mid-1980s. One of the effects of this was the teachers became a little prickly about giving up their time on a Saturday morning to supervise a cricket match, when they had already been compelled to do things like Planned Activity Time. Even after things settled down again, there were fewer and fewer schools playing cricket, and there was now a generation of boys who had grown into young men with no personal experience of the game. This was in contrast to the 1940s and 1950s when there was a Schools League consisting of Forfar Academy, Brechin High School, Arbroath High School, Morgan Academy and Grove Academy. Another phenomenon in secondary schools was the total revolution that occurred to the subject called Physical Education or PE. No more were the teachers of that subject called the “drlllies” or the “gymies”, for that subject had moved steadily towards being an academic subject with written exam papers and so on. Sometimes it became ridiculous with questions set like “What is the best strategy for winning a basketball game”, for example! A conscious effort was made to introduce a wider spectrum of sports, and cricket which could only be played in summer and on a good day began to suffer even further.