Scotland will play Ireland in the final round of the tournament, as they bid to retain their U15 European Champions title.
On the eve of her visit, Ms Robison, the public health minister, said the Scottish Government had recently announced £415,000 funding for cricket in Scotland.
Ms Robison said: "Cricket has a long and proud history in Scotland and is also one of our fastest growing sports."
Ms Robison is obviously a member of the SNP but in these enlightened times when even Martin McGuinness can come out of the closet as a cricket fan, nothing particularly noteworthy there you’d think. You’d think wrong.
Actually, as the article points out, this is a damage limitation exercise on the part of the minority administration in Edinburgh after this and previous outbursts by the un-reconstructed wing of the party. It’s *only* cricket, but the divergence of views in the party does point out, despite the hierarchy's protestations of the civic nature of Scottish Nationalism 2009, there is still bubbling below the surface elements in the party whose narrow and exclusive idea of a Scottish identity still seems to lodged somewhere in the darkest 1950s.
3 comments:
1950s is generous! Many are still stuck in the 1290s.
The view that cricket is an "irrelevant" sport in scotland is far from unique to selected SNP supporters. Ill informed, none the less, but I can't really see the political point you are making. Surely Scottish Government funding, plus the positive comments of Minister Shona Robson show the limitations of ignorance?
And without sounding like someone out of the 1920's i think peoples's attitude to cricket is more based on class than national identity.
Good to learn though Martin McGuiness is a keen follower
AWC
The key part of her original comment was this:
"I don't think that in Scotland cricket merits the same support that it does down south. I would certainly support the case for our own broadcasting company that would give priority to Scottish sport."
And the key part of this bizarre concept of "Scottish sport"...what on earth is "Scottish" sport?
My point here was twofold, first the timing of the er..."pro"-cricket speech by the SNP was obviously a response to the original offending comments. Why did they feel the need to limit damage? Because the comment contained more than a hint of the promotion of the narrow version of Scottishness that the SNP realises does them no favours at all amongst the larger electorate. I find the divergence between the Ultras and Modernists amongst the SNP politicians interesting- but much more interesting is how that translates to the opinions grassroots.
Re the class thing about cricket, not sure about that at all, depends where you are in the UK really- cricketing areas such as Yorkshire and perhaps even Glasgow(!) (bearing in mind the high proportion of British/Scottish-Asians nowliving there) would tend to disprove that theory.
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