Sandy Strang: Lost talent hits Penicuik

It's a far cry from those heady days of late summer 2008 when the Midlothian lads destroyed dominant Greenock's hopes of yet another Scottish Cup triumph en route to the final at a sun-drenched Bothwell Castle Policies. In the most important game in their long history Penicuik had Ferguslie reeling at 59 for 6, only to let a couple of chances go abegging, allowing the Paisley men to stage an unlikely recovery to 163 all out, and eventual victory by just 26 runs. It was a huge opportunity lost. It's been all downhill for Penicuik ever since that fateful August day. Club President John Downie is pragmatic. "It's undeniably dispiriting when a host of home-grown youngsters whom you've nurtured through the ranks then up and leave for so-called bigger teams," he says. "We lost Ryan Flannigan to Watsonians and Stuart Chalmers - our ex-captain who bagged five wickets in that Scottish Cup final - departed, initially to Grange. This winter left-armers Keith Morton and Craig MacKellar have both decamped to Premiership Heriot's. Just as damaging is the loss of Rikki Davidson to a career in the Merchant Navy.

It's only recently, too, that left-arm spinner Willie Morton, ex-Warwickshire and 16 times capped by Scotland, decided to call it a day in his 50th year. The loss of promising left-arm seamer John Mitchell, now at Drumpelllier, was a further blow. Penicuik even began this season without a fully confirmed captain, Greg Ruthven doing the job on a match-to-match basis.

Yet it's not all doom and gloom. "We've secured the services of two fine overseas players," adds Downie, "in professional Ryan Nurse, cousin of current West Indies T20 off-spinner Ashley, and 20-year old South African overseas amateur Alvin Carstens from Bloemfontein, and we're very hopeful they can help sustain us until some of the next crop of promising youngsters mentored by our coaching team are ready to step up."

Nurse has certainly hit the ground running, as Edinburgh Accies can attest. They looked reasonably placed having posted 185 until cavalier Nurse set about them with a blistering 72 in 44 deliveries to see his new side home to a two-wicket D/L win. Although one of Scotland's earliest cricket clubs, founded in the 1840s as Victorian industrialisation saw Penicuik's paper mills open and many English workers migrate north, Penicuik CC spent most of their first 50 years in relative obscurity. It was not until 1997 that they won their first ever Border League title.Then came the decade of boom which saw some fine players sign up to wear the maroon badge, serious names like Alvin Greenidge, George Reifer, Andy Goram, and most recently South Australian keeper Graham Manou, capped by Australia at Birmingham in the 2009 Ashes series. Those recent years of plenty now seem a distant memory. But don't discount the possibility of another Penicuik renaissance. Bullish John Downie doesn't. And he's been there before.