Sandy Strang: Scottish club cricket at a crossroads

Thank goodness for Sunday night. At last it was all over. The first – and possibly last – SNCL two-division Premiership/Championship staggered to a deeply unsatisfactory close. And few were lamenting.

Sure, the curse of the most horribly wet summer in recent times hasn’t helped an embryonic league cutting its teeth.

The unceasing monsoons led to a marked discrepancy in the number of games played by individual teams. Premiership Dunfermline remarkably completed 16 of their scheduled 18 games, compared with champions Carlton and relegated duo Greenock and Drumpellier, who each finished just 11.

Meanwhile, in the Championship, Kelburne concluded 13 fixtures, two more than any other side, in contrast to champions Dumfries and runners-up West Lothian, who each finished just nine of the scheduled 17 games, which works out at a very lowly 53 per cent. And that figure also includes attenuated matches resolved under D/L. When the differentials in games played are so large, inevitably we have skewed league tables.

Factor in another contentious feature, the inevitably random nature of scheduling in respect of home and away matches when in a 16-team league the number of available Saturdays means you can only play each other once, and it’s little wonder that many are questioning the integrity and essential validity of such a format.

But it wasn’t just the rain that blighted play. Other factors, many wholly avoidable, were also involved. Unfortunate though it was that Edinburgh CC were ejected from the Championship with the season looming, thereby leaving the competition with just 15 teams, was it not possible even at this 11th hour for the authorities to persuade another team from one of the feeder leagues to join up?

Many clubs have since stated they’d have jumped at the chance. This would immediately have prevented the blank Saturday suffered by all 15 remaining Championship teams, further ludicrously compounded by the decision to suspend the entire league in June to accommodate a new one-off local-based T20 competition. The net result was that, bang in the middle of an already short season when motivation and desire to play would arguably be at its highest, four teams were saddled with two league-free June Saturdays. Also, just because the Championship was reduced by one team, was this a valid reason to delete the crucial competitive element by removing relegation – even if eventual bottom club Penicuik might disagree?

Further scheduling absurdities then arose at the season’s end with the contrived mini-league play-offs, which meant two fixtures for everyone on the last weekend, further compounded by venue unavailability. West Lothian, for example, who had earlier in the season travelled west to King George V Park for a fixture against Renfrew were then also, ludicrously, required to head for Renfrew once more at the play-off stage. Was that fair and equitable?

Benefit matches and six-a-side competitions, once the traditional rituals of enjoyable end-of-season Sundays, were also badly compromised, while improvised “shadow” sides, well short of full strength, contested many of the less meaningful final-day league fixtures.

Another scheduling complaint that’s again been well aired is that the end of the cricket season clashes with the start of the domestic rugby year, thereby creating logistical problems in terms of facilities such as pitches, dressing rooms and even player availability at the likes of Heriot’s, Watsonians, SMRH and Edinburgh Accies. This line of argument deserves less support. It was ever thus in the modern era with the Edinburgh rugby school grounds, although several eyebrows were rightly raised when newly-promoted Edinburgh Accies were permitted to arrange six of their first seven fixtures away from home.

SNCL travel has again been a vexatious issue in terms of time and, increasingly, expense, and this would be even more problematic should the present 16-team structure be maintained for 2012. Take just one example. Stoneywood-Dyce versus newly promoted Dumfries. A putative fixture which once elicited the amusingly reductive line from Cricket Scotland CEO Roddy Smith: “Stoneywood v Dumfries – why?”

A 432-mile return trip. A minimum of nine-and-a-half hours on the road. Twenty-one hours in total to play a game of league cricket. Arrant nonsense. Life’s too short.

So what now? There’s little time to lose. The next few weeks look set to be riven by frantic, frequently embittered internecine strife, as increasingly fractious negotiations are conducted to cut a clear swathe through a dense forest of conflicting, oft entrenched views. The initial gloves will come off later today when Cricket Scotland’s Future Structures Group [FSG] will publish its report following the questionnaire lately completed by current SNCL players. This will include a position statement from each of the three feeder leagues, the Western Union, ESCA, and the Strathmore & Perthshire Union. It’s my understanding that the west clubs will predominantly favour a return to regionalisation, the east stance will be equivocal, whilst the Strathmore Union will broadly favour a national set-up. Further muddied waters.

But – and it’s a hugely crucial but – it’s also my understanding that the Cricket Scotland authorities will themselves issue their own position statement. And herein lies the rub. The governing body will state unequivocally their considered view that the SNCL is not fit for purpose, and that it is no longer regarded as a recognised pathway for players aspiring to international honours, having now been superseded by regional and national academies and the national age-group structures. This is a fundamental change. One of the key cornerstones upon which a national league was first instituted has been removed. Officially. A – some would say THE – chief raison d’etre for the SNCL has gone.

Debate is set to rage throughout September. Meetings public and clandestine will be held. Threats of possible regional league UDI will be issued. All prior to an SNCL Forum to be convened by Cricket Scotland on Sunday 2 October. Again it’s my understanding that affiliated clubs will be faced with two options. A revised SNCL, comprising two ten-team divisions or a reversion to total regionalisation.

It’s anyone’s guess at this stage which way such a vote would go. Voting through an SNCL reduced to just an elite 20 from the current 32 clubs would currently involve a lot of turkeys voting for Christmas. But make no mistake. These are desperately crucial days for the entire future of Scottish club and representative cricket as we know it. The implications are momentous. For everyone.