Sandy Strang: Cricket Scotland must cut red tape which is tying the hands of Harper

Published on Monday 10 May 2010 20:57

HE HAS been one of Scottish cricket's most successful imports for nearly two decades now. This should have been charismatic Guyana all-rounder David Harper's 18th successive season in this country in what has been a splendid career as a professional, coach and outstanding player for Prestwick, Kilmarnock, Ferguslie, and now for a second stint at Kelburne.

But the affable West Indian has spent the past two Saturdays watching helplessly from the sidelines as his young Paisley team, playing their first two SNCL matches in eight years following their elevation from the Western Union, have toiled in his absence, going down to successive heavy defeats to Corstorphine and SMRH.

The dignified pied piper from Georgetown, who has made a huge impact on the development of two generations of young cricketers here – mentoring, among others, Scottish caps David Haggo, Drew Parsons, Dom Rigby, Majid Haq and Omer Hussain, and most ironically of all, Scotland's current technical director Andy Tennant – now finds himself a hapless victim of bureaucratic red tape.

Notwithstanding his demonstrably outstanding coaching record, Harper's West Indian Level 2 coaching qualification is not recognised by the Cricket Scotland governing body as being the equivalent of the gold standard ECB piece of paper – even though Harper was deemed eligible to compete last year in the feeder league from which Kelburne qualified.

A precedent was also surely set when he was deemed eligible by the governing body to compete in the SNCL-run 2009 play-off matches.

Cricket Scotland's competitions committee will convene this evening to discuss a detailed submission from beleaguered Kelburne, and it must be hoped that commonsense will prevail and that Harper will once again be permitted to ply his trade in his beloved and indebted Scotland. Special dispensations have been issued in many a far less deserving case.

Highland cricket given shot in arm

IT'S ALL go these days for cricket in the Highlands. The North of Scotland Cricket Association, bolstered by their success in the 2009 SCU Trophy – the national cup competition for clubs not in the SNCL and ineligible for the Small Clubs Cup – when a NoSCA select defeated East Kilbride by just six runs in a New Williamfield thriller, on Sunday took on MCC at Gordonstoun with a team comprising players from RAF Lossiemouth, Fochabers, Highland and Elgin, and captained by Lossie stalwart Dave Wolton.

Next up, Lossie, in conjunction with a couple of Army and Navy players based in Scotland, will play the Saltires under a 'Scottish Forces XI' banner in a Twenty20 evening charity match in aid of 'Help for Heroes' on Thursday 17 June at Grange, two days before the ODI between Scotland and England.

"The game will be prefaced by an army parachutist delivering the match ball and a fly-past by Tornado jets," announced Wolton.

Jury still out on benefit to national squad of Regional Series

IT WAS billed as a new competition designed to bridge the ever-widening gap between club and international cricket, taking domestic cricket on to a higher level, and thereby allowing the country's leading cricketers to stake their claim for national squad selection. The three 'super teams' in the much-vaunted new elite Regional Series with the upbeat monikers, Caledonian Highlanders, Eastern Knights and Western Warriors, were certainly drawn from the three traditional powerbases of Scottish cricket and were led by three dynamic captains in Jan Stander, Gordon Drummond and Qasim Sheikh respectively.

But the burning question remains after the first set of just three matches – the second set of three will be played in September along with a climactic T20 Bash involving all three teams – whether this represents enough cricket from which meaningful lessons can be learned by both players and selectors. The selectors haven't learned much that they didn't know already, such as that the old guard batters Ryan Watson, Fraser Watts and Gavin Hamilton remain as good as we have at the top of the order.

In fairness it did present a chance for gangly uncapped bowler Neil Laidlaw from York, a Jim Love recommendation, to take four wickets and force his way into the first Clydesdale Bank 40 Saltires squad for the Sky-televised match against Leicestershire at Grace Road this Sunday, while Penicuik's precocious 17-year old Glenalmond schoolboy Freddie Coleman's nicely compiled 26 for the Highlanders last Monday surely helped cement his first call-up to the full squad.