Understrength Greenock meet champs

Roger Graham Roger Graham - 1551 • Published 15 May 2009 12:30

HAVING had the opening two Saturdays of the league season washed out by the May monsoons, Greenock attempt once more to get their season started when last season"s champions Grange are the visitors to Glenpark.

The Edinburgh side won that title due to the silly points system then in place. The Glenpark men were runners-up - under the previous points sytem they would have nicked the title from Grange - and were also hampered by the continued loss of top players to the international side.

That will hinder them again tomorrow when three or four players could be missing, certainly including professional Cameron Borgas. Such are the demands of the international team nowadays that the Premier League is, frankly, seriously devalued. The best team will not always win the title.

On paper Greenock look comfortably the strongest team in the top flight, having no fewer than six players - seven if you include Scotland under-19 bowler Willie Rowan - likely to be involved in international cricket.

In reality it is very much a double edged sword, and one upon which Greenock are likely to fall on more than one or two occasions this season. Tomorrow is a case in point. The Glenpark ranks will be seriously thinned, with Craig Wright, Cameron Borgas and Dewald Nel all in against Warwickshire at the Grange.

Richie Berrington, 12th man against Middlesex, may be released for club duty.

For as long as I can remember Cricket Scotland has been trying to sit at the top table of cricket. The simple, inescapable, truth is that amateur players will never genuinely compete in any sustained way with professionals. As if recognising that fact, Cricket Scotland have tied up three players on professional contracts, and hope to add to that number.

Does it really matter? Is it a profitable use of resources? Three, it has to be said, makes no difference to anything. And anyone of genuine professional worth will vanish south to play in England.

How many of our players have managed to do that successfully - by which I mean holding down a first team place with any consistency - over the last 20 years?

There is no reason why professional cricket in Scotland should be sustainable when our top clubs so often play in front of crowds of less than 50 people.

Greenock, the best supported club in the Premier League, frequently arrive for games in our capital city against Premier League opposition to find that they carry a bigger travelling support than assembled by their hosts. A top crowd at Heriot"s is often around a dozen lonely souls, battling against hypothermia on its vast, open spaces.

Those who do enjoy their club cricket will invariably tell you that to them it is far more important than watching the international side compete in a lopsided contest against superior opposition.

We have been chasing an unattainable dream for as long as I can remember.

That is not to say that our international players should not occasionally play against the best, that we should not strive to be the best we can be, but we seem obsessed to the point where the club game is definitely suffering.

Tomorrow the best side on paper in the top league in the country, playing at home, will be very much the underdogs.

If Greenock continually lose their best players to the international team this season, success may be finishing fourth or fifth.

Tomorrow"s match, which will start at 1pm, has been sadly devalued as a contest.

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This article appeared in Greenock Telegraph 15 May 09

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