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

87 And at long last, cricket was forced to address the problem of South Africa. The Springboks had been popular and successful visitors in 1965, but in 1968 when they tried to dictate to England that Basil D’Oliveira could not play in South Africa because of the colour of his skin (almost unbelievable some 50 years later!), even the fuddy-duddies of Lord’s and The Daily Telegraph like Gubbie Allen and EW Swanton had to admit that there was a problem about apartheid. The “Keep politics out of cricket” brigade were shamed into silence. Neither the 1968/9 tour of South Africa nor the projected return tour to England in 1970 took place, plunging South Africa into deserved sporting isolation for the next quarter of a century. The era of Strathie’s success was also one of economic prosperity. Everyone moaned about their standard of living (but then again, everyone always does!) but in fact cars and foreign holidays were now the order of the day. Both these phenomena had now loosened the grip of traditional pastimes like cricket. The Beatles dominated the music scene, and became even weirder as the 1960s progressed, and in general, pop music became even more detached from reality. Football became stronger – England won the World Cup in 1966, Celtic the European Cup in 1967 and Manchester United the year after, and there was an excellent World Cup in Mexico in 1970. But cricket struggled, with many clubs in the Strathmore Union no longer even bothering to charge for entrance to their games, on the grounds that there were so few spectators in any case. But to begin at the beginning, Strathmore’s first season in the run was 1962. The weather was not of the best that season, but Strathmore played all their games bar one, and finished the season undefeated with 18 wins out of 21, with George Myles taking 78 wickets, and Bob Laing, the Secretary was not wrong in saying at George Myles, pictured in 1962