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

23 unwieldy and difficult. One suspects that there may have been an element of local spite involved here. However, Arbroath were outvoted, Forthill XI were accepted and duly played in season 1933. Winter 1932/33 was a notorious one in cricket history, for it was the Bodyline tour in which England “won the Ashes but nearly lost a Dominion” thanks to their policy of bowling short-pitched balls at full speed at the Australian batsmen, particularly the new prodigy called Donald Bradman. Opinion was probably at first in favour of England’s tactics – the captain Douglas Jardine was of Scottish descent and his main strike bowler Harold Larwood was a clearly likeable character of working class Nottinghamshire origins – and it was only after the Englishmen returned home that people began to question the validity of their tactics. But it did make people talk about cricket, with workers coming back into the jute factories after their breakfast with the newspapers and everyone asking them what the latest was. The morning papers, of course, only contained a report of the previous day’s play, with perhaps a latest score in the Stop Press section, but there was a particular rush home at 5.00 pm to read The Evening Telegraph with its report of what had happened during the previous night. Cricket was in early 1933 a major topic of conversation and once again, April was awaited with a great deal of enthusiasm. Would Brechin do it yet again? This was a topic of far more interest than the assumption of power in Germany of that funny little man with a moustache. Summer 1933 saw glorious weather throughout, but economically, depressionaboundedwithwork inthe jutefactoriesfitful andunpredictable. In many cases, workers were on “short time” and working only three days a week. Occasionally factories had to close down for a few weeks until another order came in. This naturally hit everything, for there was less money to spend in shops and on goods, but in some ways it was a boon to cricket, for, although at many grounds, there was a nominal charge for admission, sometimes it was only a collection and in any case, it was usually possible to watch a game without paying by looking over a fence, if indeed the ground was enclosed. Cricket in some ways missed the boat here however, for it failed to reach out to the vast army of unemployed as much as it should have. There were still, for example, the appalling “Members Only” signs in so many