Scots cricket hall of fame a click away

“It’s been our ambition for a while to have a Hall of Fame, so we decided to get on with it,” Cricket Scotland chief executive Roddy Smith said. “We think it’s an ideal way of recognising the huge contribution that some outstanding players have made to Scottish cricket over the years.”

At present the main criterion for inclusion is to have represented Scotland in a full international, which excludes world-class overseas professionals such as Rahul Dravid. In future, however, eligibility could be widened to include those who have served the Scottish game in other capacities.

“All 12 of our inductees this year are Scotland players, but in years to come we may want to honour others who have contributed in different ways,” Smith said.

“Just as Bill McLaren has been included in Scottish Rugby’s Hall of Fame for the service he gave to the game, so we could include people who have made a major contribution to Scottish cricket without having played internationally.”

In future there will only be two inductees per year, although group entries may be allowed in cases where it would be invidious to name only one representative. An obvious case in point would be the Freuchie team which won the National Village Cup in 1985, a historic achievement which was clearly a collective one.

Smith himself and Cricket Scotland chairman Keith Oliver selected this year’s dozen inductees from a shortlist drawn up by a group which included ex-internationals Craig Wright and George Goddard, renowned scorer Neil Leitch and former Scotsman journalist Norman Mair, who represented his country at cricket and rugby. It was agreed beforehand that a number of candidates should be proposed from each of five time brackets: pre-1909 (the year in which the Scottish Cricket Union was re-formed); 1909-39; 1946-70; 1971-90; and 1991 to the present.

Although the identity of the 12 will not be announced until the dinner, there are several names who would almost certainly have been considered by the panel, if not necessarily selected. In the period from 1991 to the present, for example, it would be hard to dismiss the contribution of Wright himself, as a player and captain, but also as a Cricket Scotland official and a highly effective ambassador for the sport.

With more than 100 caps as Scotland captain, George Salmond is another worthy of consideration from the past two decades. Gavin Hamilton and Dougie Brown, both of whom also represented England, and John Blain, Scotland’s youngest international in more than a century, may also have been considered by the panel.

Going back to the first time bracket, any number of cricketing pioneers are worthy of being honoured by induction. The wider contribution of Leslie Balfour-Melville, for example, has already been recognised: in 2002 he became one of the inaugural inductees into the Scottish Sports Hall of Fame.

Yet although he was an international rugby player, a fine golfer and an adept at several other sports, Balfour-Melville’s biggest achievement came in cricket, when he captained Scotland to victory over Australia in 1882. Another fine all-rounder from the same period was Andrew Don-Wauchope, who played for Scotland in their first international against Ireland in 1888.

In the period from 1909 until the outbreak of the Second World War, the longest and arguably most substantial service to Scottish cricket came from John Kerr. Making his first-class debut in 1908, the Greenock batsman went on to represent his country in every international from then until 1933.

Kerr’s 178 against Ireland was a Scottish record for three decades until surpassed by James Aitchison, who made his first-class debut at the start of the selection panel’s third time period. Those two men remain the only Scots to have scored a century against full Test-playing sides.

The cricketer David Livingstone is not as well known as his explorer namesake, but in the 1950s and 1960s he was celebrated for his exploits as a bowler. In 1957 he took ten wickets against Ireland and played a major role in a victory over Warwickshire, and in 1964 he took 6-93 against Australia. Born in Glasgow in 1927, Livingstone died this year on Skye.

While there might be some initial puzzlement if you mentioned the words David Livingstone and cricket together in conversation, that could not be the case with Mike Denness. Born in Bellshill in 1940, Denness went on to captain England, and surely remains our best-known cricketer.

Denness’ first-class career ran from 1959 to 1980, so he would be eligible for inclusion in two different periods.

His competitors in the latter would include two players from Stenhousemuir, Iain Philip and Brian Hardie.

With only a dozen places available, the selection panel would inevitably have needed to make some compromises. With inductions due to take place annually, however, it is not long before anyone omitted this time has his fresh claim for inclusion.