Nobody feeling at home on The Grange as cricket treads on eggshells after report
IT was perhaps an unfortunate quirk of timing that the report on the damning seven-month long investigation into Cricket Scotland landed just two days before the most high-profile game in the country for four years.
Football managers and players like to insist they’re always desperate for an immediate outing following a bad result and here was that cliché played out in reality. Scottish cricket may have wanted to hunker down and go into hiding for several months after having their failings laid bare in such brutal fashion only for the fixture list to remove that possibility.
New Zealand, one of cricket’s leading lights, were in town yesterday for the first of three matches, a Twenty20 encounter that the world’s No5 side in this format would go on to win comfortably by 68 runs.
Cricket Scotland, therefore, had no choice but to front up at The
Grange when they would no doubt rather have been at home licking their wounds. Well, those of them who are still around at least.
Their entire board resigned on Sunday, there is no permanent chief executive in place, and even the external consultant leading their communications for the past few months has been signed off now that the investigation is concluded.
Filling those vacancies is on the to-do list after being named among the recommendations laid out by Plan4Sport in their report but that sense of organised chaos is not new in Cricket Scotland, a governing body being run on a shoestring budget with never enough bodies to complete all the jobs that need done. The stain of those racism allegations will stay forever with those staff — past and present — many of whom were merely trying to do their jobs in difficult circumstances.
There was, inevitably, an extra air of tension around The Grange but, for many of those in attendance, this was just another day out at the cricket, with the typical long queues for the beer tents and the usual picnic hampers laid out on the grass.
There was certainly no sign of any protests, audibly or visibly, over recent developments among the predominantly white crowd, the only grumbling aimed at a Scotland performance that began with a catch ruled out for a no ball in just the second over and never really got any better thereafter.
As one fan put it: ‘The board have all resigned. Who are we meant to boo?’
The PA announcer, either inadvertently or with a dark sense of humour, applied an appropriate playlist to soundtrack the week’s events,
Dignity by Deacon Blue followed later by the Proclaimers singing about going ‘from misery to happiness’.
Those who had got the cricket ball rolling with the allegations that eventually led to the publication of the damning 52-page report were there, too.
Former Scotland internationals Majid Haq and Qasim Sheikh made a staged entrance with their lawyer, Aamer Anwar, before walking around the periphery of the ground alongside Cricket Scotland’s interim chief executive, Gordon Arthur who, belatedly, had offered the pair an overdue personal apology to follow up the one given to Sportsmail late on Monday night.
It was a sign that those who had helped to bring the organisation to its knees would not be hiding away either. Sheikh, though, did admit walking through the crowd had been a nerve-wracking experience.
‘You know that people are looking,’ said Sheikh. ‘We know the conversation that’s bound to be happening: “There’s Qasim and Majid… they’ve just called out the whole institution”.
‘You can feel it. You can sense that energy. I’m not surprised. It was only on Monday (the report). But the reason we’ve come here today is, hopefully, maybe people can start approaching us. They can see that we are not scary people. That we are quite happy to have a nice conversation and talk about anything that anybody wants to talk about.
‘People are on eggshells. I am not going to bite anybody, I am no physical threat to anybody. I am here to possibly have some discussions. The chief exec welcomed us into the pavilion area. It is strange so far, but being back here at The Grange, where I played for Scotland against Australia a few years ago, brings back fond memories. Sadly, not as many memories as I should have had, but I wish the team all the best.’
The lack of Asian faces in the crowd was typical of a Scotland game against anyone other than India and Pakistan, another sign of the journey cricket in this country has to go on. Two Asian men did manage to find a place of sanctuary to pray amid the hubbub but they were in the minority.
‘This is such a diverse community in Scotland,’ added Sheikh. ‘So many from South Asian backgrounds — just go around the cricket clubs. Why is it not a bigger influx of people from the South Asian community today? If Pakistan were in town, you might see a few more in. But there’s a lot of Scottish South Asians as well. Are we connecting with those communities? Are we encouraging them to come forward? Those are all questions that still need to be answered.’
The hope will be that it is the younger generation who will benefit from the seismic sea change that is about to happen, those Asian kids eagerly playing with their plastic bats and balls next to the boundary rope as the real action continued on the other side.
Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the on-field action did little to lift Scottish spirits in a difficult week. The hosts won the toss and put New Zealand into bat, with the visitors going on to amass a total of 225 on the back of Finn Allen’s terrific century.
Scotland’s reply started promisingly but once openers George Munsey and Calum MacLeod departed after a stirring 62-run opening partnership, there was an inevitability about the outcome, with the hosts finishing on 157-8 from their 20 overs to lose by 68 runs. It was a disappointing finish but, in many ways, in tune with the tone of the week as a whole.