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

95 play cricket on both days every weekend. The threat of the withdrawal of “favours” was perhaps a potent reason why some clubs were beginning to find it difficult to raise a team! Cricket suffered further in 1967. It is generally reckoned that 1967 was the best ever year for Scottish football, and inevitably all that summer people spoke about little other than the triumphs at Wembley and in Lisbon. The start of the football season in August was much anticipated, and cricket was squeezed, suffering from another summer in which the weather was not always hospitable and also from having no great counter-attraction to football on TV, for the Test Matches were two less than totally attractive series against India and Pakistan. It was also the summer of “flower power”, Hippies and Sergeant Pepper all against the backdrop of the worsening war in Vietnam – none of which things really did much for cricket! Strathmore continued to dominate, winning both Divisions with a degree of comfort. Although percentages were still the determining factor, three points were now awarded for a win and one for a draw, a brave effort to encourage teams to go for a victory rather than settle for a draw. Too many games in the past had seen the team batting second “bringing down the shutters” and not really going for a win. This did not necessarilymean that the games were not interesting, for there is a certain skill in trying to winkle a team out. Late in the evening, the light beginning to fade, spinners operating at both ends, fielders clustered round the bat, numerous appeals for bat/pad catches, lbws – all that can be very exciting. The trouble was that so often it was not – with games finishing with the team batting second scoring 80 for 4 in two hours and a bit while theoretically chasing 190! It was becoming harder to persuade the increasing amount of cricket sceptics in the young generation that this was a worthwhile way of spending a Saturday or Sunday when by now, there were far too many other attractions in an increasingly wealthy and diverse society. The continuing success of Strathmore also had a stultifying effect on the others. Teams like Brechin, Arbroath, Meigle, Mannofield XI and Perthshire XI, all with glorious pasts in the Union, now approached games against Strathmore with a degree of trepidation, and it was not unknown for some players to suddenly discover that they had a family commitment or a bad cold on the weekend that a visit from the Forfar men was in the offing.