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

91 In the Second Division, Errol were struggling with their pitch and were on the wrong end of a few complaints about “long grass”. NCR would resign at the end of the season, and there was much talk about teams in the Two Counties Cup who appeared to contain a few men who were more likely to be classed as 1st XI players. The convention was that teams with two teams did not include their better players in the Two Counties Cup, but it was a convention that was more honoured in its breach than in its observance, and teams had to be reminded of the rule that if you had played in the Three Counties, you were not eligible for the Two Counties. This rule did not, of course, guarantee that no 1st XI players took part, for they might not have been selected for a Three Counties Cup game, but still appeared regularly in the 1st XI in League matches. It was a matter that would cause a great deal of angst. The Union Select team played three games that season, surprisingly losing to the North of Scotland, but earning honourable draws against the East of Scotland and the West of Scotland. Some fans thought that this was by no means the most profitable way of playing cricket, but it did give local players a chance to play at grounds like Titwood, for example, where they were lavishly entertained in the traditional Glasgow way. Those who loved Strathmore had more reason to be happy in 1964, when they won the Championship and the Three Counties Cup. It was once again a disappointing season as far as weather was concerned with Strathmore and several other teams only managing to play 16 games out of a possible 22. They won 15 of them, however, and apart from a defeat by St Andrews University on the early date of 13th April, never lost even another friendly in 1964. It was often felt, certainly in Forfar, but also in less biased parts of Scottish cricket, that Strathmore were the best team in Scotland. The trouble was that the crowded calendar gave them very few opportunities to play teams in Edinburgh and Glasgow to prove it, but they did at the end of the season take revenge on Kelburne for their defeat the previous year. The weather was not the only reason for the cancellation of some fixtures in 1964, for, (a rare occurrence in thewesternworld), therewas an outbreak of typhoid in Aberdeen in the early part of the season. Some contaminated corned beef from Argentina or Uruguay, sold in William Low’s grocer shop was blamed for it, and the whole thing became a media circus with very few deaths, other than a few elderly people and people with underlying health problems who might have died in any case of natural causes. The National