Lesley Riddoch: The dominance of football- it's just not cricket, is it?

Published on Friday 7 January 2011 17:11

Scots love to ridicule England's national game - but at least down south they are actually winnners in their chosen sport

IMMORTALITY is assured for this Ashes side" exclaims a quality daily newspaper. "You Could Win A Signed England & Australia Bat" trumpets a UK energy provider. "Sign up for Ashes 2014-15" offers a leading UK mobile phone provider. The Ashes victory in Australia has proved England can win at something - so the result has been TV overload.

Cricketers watching BBC News bulletins are in a minority - even down south. So for everyone else, interest in England's Ashes win relied heavily upon being English. And yet TV and radio bosses who okayed blanket Ashes coverage across all the Home Nations didn't consider for a second that England's finest sporting moment might leave members of rival nations supremely unmoved.

But I'm ready to watch that final ball in Sydney over and over again if it puts clear blue water between myself and Scotland's footballing chauvinists who believe no other sport should command any attention.

Take Chick Young. The well-connected BBC Scotland football commentator was on Good Morning Scotland on Friday - the morning of England's Ashes victory - with Mike Stanger from Cricket Scotland.

Chick is deliberately provocative and excels at the ancient Weegie art of winding people up. But like most of West Coast Scotland's footballing mafia, a sporting fundamentalist sits behind the ready smile, ready to undermine, stereotype and ridicule all sports which appear to threaten the transcendental importance of "The National Game".

Thus... cricket is rounders for the English and isn't suited for Scottish weather. It's as insignificant as tiddlywinks and takes as little effort. Nobody north of the Border plays it, likes it or can recognise its stars.

In fact, cricket is played by around 30,000 adults and kids in Scottish clubs and schools. It has older roots than organised football - the first Scottish Cup Final was between Queen's Park and Clydesdale, a team of cricketers who played football to keep fit between cricket seasons. Those early cricketers were local workers and craftsmen, not posh boys. Above all though, the vast majority involved in Scottish cricket today are active players not passive spectators, almost the reverse of Scottish football.

Watching from the sidelines has become such an artform it's no wonder the Tartan Army is regularly voted the world's best supporters club. Scots do watching so well we allow it to pass for participation.

It is not. Anglers get more exercise casting unsuccessfully all day than the average football spectator does reaching for a pie and Bovril.Cricketers break sweat more often than all those watching the Beautiful Game put together (unless the heating's been too high in the car on the way to the ground.)

Of course many weekend spectators are weekday players at junior or amateur football clubs. But young stars are signed up by professional clubs whose insistence on exclusivity stops talented lads playing with school mates and robs average teams of the brilliant players that makes turning up worthwhile. When it comes to professional signings, many of those young Scots are dumped for more talented, eye-catching and audience-attracting foreign talent. And another generation of talented young athletes is lost to Scotland because there is, after all, no legitimate sporting career worth having after rejection from the Beautiful Game in Scotland. Except perhaps football commentary.

But still, footie fundamentalists blame other sports for "robbing" the game of the young blood it needs to thrive. Indeed this is where the provocative Good Morning Scotland discussion teetered on the truly ridiculous. A cricket ground is being built in Glasgow's Bellahouston Park, Chick Young saw this as a national catastrophe.

It seems that long ago, in Bellahouston, Chick himself learned to do keepy-uppeys. Thus the turf is hallowed, and the park should be retained for the exclusive use of footballers. Forever. Unfortunately, for Chick Young, other sports have "invaded". Football posts at Bellahouston - and elsewhere - come down in the summer to make space for cricket and even Australian Rules football. The shrine has been tarnished. Cricketers are encroaching on football's rightful space. In fact Glasgow's only public cricket ground will be built on a former pitch n'putt course - not an old football ground. But why let the facts get in the way of a good rant. Chick Young clearly believes competition from other sports is why Scotland can't qualify for the World Cup. The assumption that there is one "natural" game speaks volumes about the drab monoculture the non football-crazy majority are forced to tolerate in Scotland.

Young people are choosing "non-traditional" sports in every country of the world. Celebrated sports commentators elsewhere don't try to stamp out those alternatives - they know activity in any sport beats sitting on the Glorious Sidelines.

Even in fitba' crazy Scotland, statistics show the most popular activities for adults are walking 2+ miles (30 per cent), swimming (16 per cent), football (10 per cent) and cycling (10 per cent). There's no question that football is popular - 74 per cent of school-age boys and 27 per cent of girls play at least once a month. But women's participation rates in sports have fallen 7 per cent in a decade.

That should worry policy makers far more than our prospects of World Cup qualification. Research shows the crippling agony of brittle bone disease is best prevented by physical activity by women in their youth.Equally, the greatest predictor of fitness amongst children, epecially girls, is the activity level of their most familiar role model - and that's mum not dad.

By the age of 55 only a third of Scots are still active in a sport. Enough.

Scotland contains many different social worlds. The dominance of football denies that reality. Funding follows social clout and non footballing, tax-paying Scots have become second-class sporting citizens. Scotland needs to raise all its games.