Sandy Strang: Scots need the results to merit place at top table

IT'S ludicrous," fulminates Cricket Scotland Chief Executive Roddy Smith. "It would be disastrous for Scottish cricket to reduce the World Cup to ten teams for 2015 in Australia.

The message it would send out is that world cricket is again dominated by the few, and that nobody else is allowed to gatecrash their party."

Smith was responding to an ICC leak that their Chief Executive's Committee favours a reduction in the number of teams competing at the 50-over showpiece, the format that underpins our game - and a corresponding increase in World T20 participants.

"There can be no doubt," argues Smith, "that significant ICC investment in growing the game globally and improving the on-field performances of the better Associate countries has been a huge success story. However, for this to have a real long-term effect world cricket needs to be a meritocracy, where your opponents and your place in the world order are dictated not by the fact that you are a full, associate or affiliate member - but by your results."

A meritocracy. Results. Performance accountability. There's the rub. Smith and his fellows in the Scottish hierarchy must be feeling some very valid concerns about whether we are currently matching up. Sure, under Gordon Drummond's astute leadership Scotland were runners-up to Ireland in the recent ICC World Cricket League Division 1 tournament in the Netherlands - but only after scraping through by six wickets and two runs respectively against Kenya and Afghanistan.

Nor, if we're being empirically results-orientated meritocratic, did the subsequent poor performance of our Scotland A team in last week's ICC European Division One Championship lend much encouragement to the belief that our ratings position will be heading upward in the future. We sent a very strong A team to Jersey, including most of our emergent young batsmen, the recently full-capped Olly Hairs, Freddie Coleman, Ryan Flannigan, and Ewan Chalmers, alongside 26-times capped Qasim Sheikh and Moneeb Iqbal with 17 caps. Also there were some of our most touted young bowlers, like Tyler Buchan, Willie Rowan and Zeeshan Bashir. Experienced 32-times capped all-rounder Jan Stander was there too. Yet results were deeply disappointing. Losing to Italy by seven runs, to Jersey by six wickets, and to Ireland by four wickets was not the stuff of future champions.

The batting at all levels continues to be brittle and inconsistent, too often relying on salvage jobs from the bottom six. To be fair at a lower level our U19 squad are currently performing well in their ICC European qualifiers for the World Cup, having beaten strong opposition in Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands Nor would the hierarchy's mood be at all assuaged by the fact that our closest Associate member rivals Ireland and Holland have been able to play and beat the Bangladeshi Test tourists in this month's ODIs, thereby improving their world rankings, whereas the Scots were denied by the Titwood torrents.

The chance for some atonement will come at the end of this week when the Saltires resume their split CB40 campaign with a Titwood double-header against Durham and Warwickshire. Once again we can call on Tasmanian George Bailey, fresh from an outstanding series captaining Australia A against Sri Lanka A. Bailey's contributions, excellent in the first round of CB40 matches, will again be sorely needed. By all means, Roddy, insist on a more rigorously meritocratic approach. But it's all the more incumbent then to deliver on the pitch.

Remarkable Carlton are masters of short game

THEY'RE yet to win a Premier League title. They've never won a Scottish Cup - Although they were losing finalists to Greenock in 2007.

But when it comes to the shortened T20 version of the game Carlton are the undisputed Scottish masters. Check the impressive stats. Four times Masterton Trophy winners since 2006, and losing finalists in the other year, 2009. And now, as of Sunday, reigning Murgitroyd T20 national champions for the second time in the three-year history of the competition.

Nor did Messers Watts, Drummond, Mommsen, English, Gilmour, Lyons, Kerr, Evans et al enjoy an easy passage to this year's success. Grange had to be overcome in the Masterton final. Then it was Clydesdale in Sunday's national semi - crushed by 130 runs thanks largely to a blistering Mommsen 71 - and formidable Forfarshire, easy conquerors of Dumfries by 105 runs in the other semi, in the final itself.

"It wasn't a thrilling spectacle as finals go," pronounced tournament supremo Keith Young. "Carlton's 152 always looked likely to be too many for the Forthill team after Ryan Watson was dismissed for a duck in the first-over - but the best all-round team undoubtedly won."

So it's hats off to sponsors Murgitroyd, to splendid hosts Poloc - and of course to Carlton, proving unequivocally once again they're still the finest T20 team in the land.

Talented father and a chip off the old block

A REMARKABLE cricketing centenary passed by unheralded this weekend.

Exactly 100 years ago, precocious leg-break bowler John Bruce-Lockhart made his Scottish international debut in the traditional three-day international against Ireland at College Park, Dublin, and the Cambridge Blue celebrated with outstanding match figures of 31.3 overs, 6 maidens, 11 for 107 - albeit that the Scots went down by a massive 208 runs. The following year, in August 1911, he again bowled splendidly in the drawn match against All India at Gala, taking 6 for 170 in 52 overs. Seventeen wickets in just two games but, ludicrously, the selectors never called on him again. He later played rugby for Scotland at fly-half and became a successful Headmaster at Sedbergh from 1937 to 1954.

Extraordinarily, the career of his son Rab followed an almost exact pattern. He too played rugby for Scotland, was later a distinguished Head at Loretto from 1960 to 1976, bowled leg-breaks for Cambridge University, and was likewise twice capped for Scotland at cricket in 1935 against Sir Julian Cahn's XI - although performing less auspiciously than his father - scoring just one run and taking no wickets in his two matches!