David Maddox: Liz Smith goes out to bat

There are plenty of politicians who fancy themselves as sportsmen. Just recently we learnt that First Minister Alex Salmond reckoned he might have been a Wimbledon champion had he kept up his tennis.

Any follower of the MSP football team will realise that there are plenty there who think they could have been SPL stars in their day. Of course, Fife MSP John Park has gone down in legend as a political version of Chopper Harris for his now infamous tackle on Chick Young last year - he's still dining out on that one.

But there are few politicians who really cut the mustard as sportsmen and women.

In Westminster the double middle distance gold medalist Lord Sebastian Coe was probably the most world class sportsman to become an MP, although his former colleague Lord Colin Moynihan was also a gold medal winning Olympic athlete as a cox in the rowing team.

Holyrood has had far less genuine sportsmen and women. Former First Minister Henry McLeish played football for East Fife, but the one international sports personality is Tory MSP Liz Smith.

Ms Smith won seven caps for Scotland as a cricketer and the picture supplied shows her practising up with the bat before a game.

It is not known how good she was as figures for her batting and bowling are not available. But she did memorably manage to clean bowl a fellow political hack, John Robertson of the Sunday Times. He went for a duck in a hacks versus MSPs match a couple of summers ago on the second bounce of a slow delivery from Ms Smith, something he is yet to live down.

Ms Smith, though, is living proof that cricket is played and supported in Scotland by Scots. And she has written a fascinating rebuttle in today's Scotsman against the views behind the demands to get the sport off TV made by some of the Nationalist MSPs, most recently in a motion by Glasgow list SNP MSP Sandra White.

David Maddox: The Numbers Game (18) - serving up a bit of Nationalism

Another Yougov poll is out tomorrow (Thursday 25 June) with results from an interesting and quite topical question.

Along with the usual "how much do you hate Gordon Brown ?" will be a question on Andy Murray.

It asks the polled to say how they feel about the World number 3's description of himself as "Scottish and British."

Now clearly there may be some who think the marketing men have got at Britain's best hope of winning Wimbledon since Fred Perry cleared off to America after being told to take his balls elsewhere by the snobs who ran tennis. Appealing to all of Britain brings in a lot more money than just Scotland and it was noticeable that in his early days Mr Murray was less inclined to be seen as British and quite keen to promote his Scottish identity (as the picture top right illustrates).

But the question is interesting given the hullabaloo surrounding Scotland poor old mercurial cyclist Chris Hoy and his emotional tears (as pictured left) in Beijing as the Union Flag was pulled up in his honour during one of his three gold medal awards.
There was clear resentment among Nationalists that any Scottish sportsman may wish to call himself British and equal desperation among unionists that he became a symbol of their cause.

So for whatever reason Andy Murray has found himself in a much bigger match than the ones he will find on Centre Court over the next week or two.