David Maddox: Fielding at silly point

There are two things you can count on in the summer months - cricket and the newspapers' silly season.

And, as seems to happen most years when there is an Ashes series, the SNP have managed to combine the two.

This time Sandra White (pictured top left), a Glasgow list MSP, has put down a motion calling on cricket to be removed from terrestrial television north of the Border because there is little interest for it here. Strange she should make the complaint considering that it only appears on news bulletins as Sky holds the rights to the game.

But even a cursory look at the evidence shows that she is wrong about cricket not being widely followed in Scotland.

There are 160 clubs registered with Cricket Scotland (including the Grange in Edinburgh, pictured right). Around 28,000 Scots play the sport, not least the Scotsman's own team, and thousands more support it. Some argue it is more played and better supported even than rugby and you never hear the Nationalists wanting to ban that sport from the television.

Scotland has also had some success competing against first class county teams in one day competitions and on the international stage. They have gained full international status in the one day game and got to the semi-finals of the 2005 ICC Trophy.

There have also been some notable Scottish players. Two of the current Scottish team play for first class counties Navdeep Poonia for Warwickshire and Kyle Coetzer for Durham.

My favourite is arguably England's greatest captain Douglas Jardine (pictured left), inventor of the infamous Bodyline bowling attack to tackle Don Bradman in the 1932/33 Ashes series. His name still still brings up the bristles on the Antipodean back.

Then there was the famous win in 2007 of Freuchie in the National Village Cricket Championships at Lords.

The sport has a long history here in Scotland too with the oldest club Kelso dating back to 1820.

Ms White of course is following in the footsteps of her fellow list SNP MSP Christine Grahame, who complained about the Ashes being on TV too much in 2005. Notably, she is yet to win a constituency contest in the Borders where cricket is most popular in Scotland, despite trying in a marginal seat three times which was one of the SNP's top targets in 2007.

It could be argued that the Nationalist dislike for the summer game comes from its historical sentiment over its origins in Scotland. It was first played by English soldiers stationed in Scotland in 1785 after they had put down the Jacobite rebellion along with Scottish Hanoverian soldiers at Culloden.

But one has to ask, as some political parties already have, whether having a go at cricket is a convenient way of having a go at the English without actually saying so as it is clear they consider the game to be an English one. It is certainly an easy way of trying to stir up anger over English interests being put over Scottish ones in television coverage.