Cricket in Scotland
Encyclopedia
Cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 has a lower profile in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 than it has in neighbouring England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. Scotland is not one of the ten leading cricketing nations which play Test matches
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

, but the Scottish national team
Scottish cricket team
The Scotland national cricket team represents Scotland in the game of cricket. They compete in the Clydesdale Bank 40 as the Scottish Saltires...

 is now allowed to play full One Day Internationals even outside the Cricket World Cup
Cricket World Cup
The ICC Cricket World Cup is the premier international championship of men's One Day International cricket. The event is organised by the sport's governing body, the International Cricket Council , with preliminary qualification rounds leading up to a finals tournament which is held every four years...

, in which Scotland competed in 2007. Scotland has a well established recreational cricket structure.

History

Cricket in Scotland has a long history, which can be traced back to the 18th century.

However, it has been afflicted by Anglocentrism, with many notable Scottish players joining the English national team, instead of their own, and with the Scottish national team playing as an English county side.

Men's National Team

The Scottish men's team
Scottish cricket team
The Scotland national cricket team represents Scotland in the game of cricket. They compete in the Clydesdale Bank 40 as the Scottish Saltires...

 competed in the Cricket World Cup
Cricket World Cup
The ICC Cricket World Cup is the premier international championship of men's One Day International cricket. The event is organised by the sport's governing body, the International Cricket Council , with preliminary qualification rounds leading up to a finals tournament which is held every four years...

 in 1999
1999 Cricket World Cup
-England:-Outside England:-Group A:-Results:-------------------------------------------------------------Group B:-Results:------------------------------------------------------------...

. It lost all five of its matches and was eliminated in the preliminary round. Scotland failed to qualify for the 2003 World Cup
2003 Cricket World Cup
-Group stage tables and results:The top three teams from each pool qualify for the next stage, carrying forward the points already scored against fellow qualifiers, plus a quarter of the points scored against the teams that failed to qualify.-Pool A:...

 but successfully qualified for the 2007 event in the West Indies
2007 Cricket World Cup
The 2007 ICC Cricket World Cup was the ninth edition of the ICC Cricket World Cup tournament that took place in the West Indies from 13 March to 28 April 2007, using the sport's One Day International format...

. Scotland won the qualifying tournament, the ICC Trophy, in Ireland in 2005. Scotland played Australia
Australian cricket team
The Australian cricket team is the national cricket team of Australia. It is the joint oldest team in Test cricket, having played in the first Test match in 1877...

, South Africa
South African cricket team
The South African national cricket team represent South Africa in international cricket. They are administrated by Cricket South Africa.South Africa is a full member of the International Cricket Council, also known as ICC, with Test and One Day International, or ODI, status...

 and the Netherlands
Dutch cricket team
The Dutch cricket team is a national cricket team representing the Netherlands. It is administered by the Koninklijke Nederlandse Cricket Bond which is based in Nieuwegein in the centre of the country and is older than many renowned cricket clubs in the West Indies, Australia, and New...

 in the opening group stage in 2007. Most of the members of Scotland's national team are amateurs, although a few Scots have played professionally in English domestic cricket, and for the England national team, including former captain Mike Denness
Mike Denness
Mike Denness is a former Scottish cricketer who played for England, Scotland, Essex and Kent. Scotland did not have a representative international team at the time of Denness' career, so he could only play for England at Test and ODI level. Denness became the first Scotsman to captain England...

.

In 2003, the Scottish team was granted a place in the English national one day cricket league in the hope that playing against professional cricketers on a regular basis would improve the performance level of the best Scottish cricketers.

Administration

The governing body for Scottish cricket is Cricket Scotland
Cricket Scotland
Cricket Scotland, formerly known as the Scottish Cricket Union, is the governing body of the sport of cricket in Scotland. The body is based at the National Cricket Academy, Edinburgh....

, which administers women's cricket and junior cricket as well as the men's game. Scotland is an Associate Member of the International Cricket Council
International Cricket Council
The International Cricket Council is the international governing body of cricket. It was founded as the Imperial Cricket Conference in 1909 by representatives from England, Australia and South Africa, renamed the International Cricket Conference in 1965, and took up its current name in 1989.The...

.

Notable Scottish cricketers

Scottish cricket's lower profile results partly from the fact that many of its best players have either played in England, or for it.

The most famous cricketer
Cricketer
A cricketer is a person who plays the sport of cricket. Official and long-established cricket publications prefer the traditional word "cricketer" over the rarely used term "cricket player"....

s to have come from Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 are probably the former England
English cricket team
The England and Wales cricket team is a cricket team which represents England and Wales. Until 1992 it also represented Scotland. Since 1 January 1997 it has been governed by the England and Wales Cricket Board , having been previously governed by Marylebone Cricket Club from 1903 until the end...

 captain, Mike Denness
Mike Denness
Mike Denness is a former Scottish cricketer who played for England, Scotland, Essex and Kent. Scotland did not have a representative international team at the time of Denness' career, so he could only play for England at Test and ODI level. Denness became the first Scotsman to captain England...

, Warwickshire all-rounder Dougie Brown
Dougie Brown
Douglas Robert Brown is a former Scottish cricketer, currently employed as a coach for Warwickshire C.C.C.. He is an all-rounder who has represented both England and Scotland at One Day International level...

, and former England test player Gavin Hamilton
Gavin Hamilton (cricketer)
Gavin Mark Hamilton is an all-round cricketer who played one Test for England and has appeared in a number of One Day Internationals for Scotland...

. Another great Scottish cricketer was B.R. (Lager) Hardie, who was a major contributor to the successful Essex side of the 70's and 80's. Possibly one of the best spinners and certainly a respected journalist was the aptly named Ian Peebles
Ian Peebles
Ian Alexander Ross Peebles was a cricketer who played for Oxford University, Middlesex, Scotland and England. After retiring from cricket he became a cricket writer, working as a journalist on The Sunday Times and as the author of many books on cricket.Peebles had one of the strangest...

, http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Players/Overall/Wisden_Cricketers_of_the_Year.html who was one of the cricketers of the year in 1931 alongside Donald Bradman
Donald Bradman
Sir Donald George Bradman, AC , often referred to as "The Don", was an Australian cricketer, widely acknowledged as the greatest batsman of all time...

.

The most infamous cricketer, a man who was vilified in Australia, was a Scot, Douglas Jardine
Douglas Jardine
Douglas Robert Jardine was an English cricketer and captain of the England cricket team from 1931 to 1933–34.When describing cricket seasons, the convention used is that a single year represents an English cricket season, while two years represent a southern hemisphere cricket season because it...

, father to and inventor of "Body Theory", which is well documented under "Bodyline
Bodyline
Bodyline, also known as fast leg theory bowling, was a cricketing tactic devised by the English cricket team for their 1932–33 Ashes tour of Australia, specifically to combat the extraordinary batting skill of Australia's Don Bradman...

". Jardine was born in British India, and died in Switzerland, spending most of his life in England. However, his parents were Scottish, and gave his own children Scottish names.

2009 ICC Twenty20 World Cup

The Scottish national team
Scottish cricket team
The Scotland national cricket team represents Scotland in the game of cricket. They compete in the Clydesdale Bank 40 as the Scottish Saltires...

 competed in the 2009 ICC World Twenty20
2009 ICC World Twenty20
The 2009 ICC World Twenty20 was an international Twenty20 cricket tournament which took place in England in June 2009. It was the second ICC World Twenty20 tournament, following the inaugural event in South Africa in September 2007...

 being held in England in June 2009. Scotland competed with well-established cricketing nations New Zealand
New Zealand cricket team
The New Zealand cricket team, nicknamed the Black Caps, are the national cricket team representing New Zealand. They played their first in 1930 against England in Christchurch, New Zealand, becoming the fifth country to play Test cricket. It took the team until 1955–56 to win a Test, against the...

 and South Africa in Group D. All of Scotland's matches were played at the Oval
The Oval
The Kia Oval, still commonly referred to by its original name of The Oval, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, in the London Borough of Lambeth. In the past it was also sometimes called the Kennington Oval...

, London.

See also

  • Sport in Scotland
    Sport in Scotland
    Sport plays a central role in Scottish culture. The temperate, oceanic climate has played a key part in the evolution of sport in Scotland, with all-weather sports like association football, rugby union and golf dominating the national sporting consciousness...

  • Clydesdale Cricket Club
    Clydesdale Cricket Club
    Clydesdale Cricket Club is a sporting club situated at Titwood on the periphery of Pollokshields in the south of Glasgow. Founded in Kinning Park in 1848 by Archibald Campbell, it was formed by members of two previous clubs which played on Glasgow Green, to cater for the burgeoning residential...

  • Woodcutters Cricket Club
  • Ardrossan Cricket Club
  • Musselburgh Cricket Club

External links

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