Cricket & Kilts

[Lady Grey]

So I'm just a little bit excited down here in Melbourne.
The Ashes has started! I'm trying my hand at hand stitching a kilt while I watch.
Are any XMarkers attending any of the matches in a Kilt?

And I have no idea why my picture are the wrong way around

[OC Richard]

Halls North Of England Eleven, 1893

[The Q]

Hmmmm Wales from the coast of Norfolk not that much more distance that going to Scotland!!

When I joined Inverness High School in 1971 the conversation went,

You're from England aren't you?
Yes
Do you know how to play cricket?
Yes
You're in the School team.....

Needless to say we lost all matches except one against Dingwall.

Unlike Freuchie Cricket club (founded 1908) in Fife which won the National (that is the whole of UK not just Scotland) village championship in 1985. and they still play well today.

[cessna152towser]

You're from England aren't you?
Yes
Do you know how to play cricket?
Yes
You're in the School team.....

Sums up my thoughts too.
Cricket is a minority sport in Scotland though very popular in England.
Just another of those little things which make us Scots that wee bit different from our English friends and neighbours.
I'm surprised that Richard found a picture of kilted cricketers. Noting that, being cricketers, they are English.

[The Q]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/seymikins/3675350769
http://www.houseofedgar.com/acatalog..._Scotland.html
http://seftonparkcc.blogspot.co.uk/2...y-cricket.html
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/sc...ricket-1059289

[OC Richard]

If one were to call Cricket a "minority sport" here, it would be doing it a kindness. Most Americans have no idea what Cricket is, beyond a type of bug.

Yet here in Tustin (California) we have a local park in which Cricket is played every weekend! That, and seven Indian restaurants, and a number of Indian grocers, is the result of Tustin having a sizable Indian population.

[wgnewcomb]

In my opinion cricket should be played in "Whites" I see team uniforms being worn in the parks in Victoria BC though!

[Mike_Oettle]

When I was a schoolboy, cricket in South Africa was very much associated with English-medium schools.
But at the age of about eight I discovered that the game bored me to tears. I would stand for long spells with nothing to do. Being a bit of a dreamer, I would turn my attention away from the pitch and look elsewhere. At least once the ball came flying past me and got lost in the long grass below the one and only field.
When I got to high school I could choose which sports I wanted to take part in, and cricket lost out to tennis. But in my second high school year I was at a boys’ school which did not offer tennis and the headmaster didn’t like my lack of a summer sport, so I became the third team scorer.
When I went to an Afrikaans-medium school there was no cricket the first year, but then a new teacher arrived who was dead keen on the game.
He was most disappointed when I, the only “Engelsman” in the school, did not turn out for cricket.
Nowadays a great many Afrikaans schools play cricket, as can be seen in the composition of the national team, the Proteas.
And at the high school my children attended, girls also play cricket (previously they had only hockey or netball).

Richard’s first picture is obviously a wedding party.

I have noticed that the Scottish cricket team wears tartan – yesterday on the TV I noticed an official in tartan trousers (trews?) and a tartan tie, but I have not seen a registration of the sett.

[kilted scholar]

In answer to the OP's question I attended the second day of the First Test at Cardiff (when Moen Ali struck 77 and England began to get the upper hand). Unfortunately the ticket prices precluded more than one day. However, it is inadvisable to wear a kilt. Bucket seats with limited leg room are not conducive to kilts. There is also the perennial danger of beer spilling as members of the crowd pass along the row, plastic cups filled to the brim, and a good quality woolen kilt is not to be put at such risk; I do not have or desire any cheap alternatives and would find few if any occasions to use them if I did.

Alex is right that cricket is in the minority in Scotland. However, one could bore members to tears with a long list of famous Scots born cricketers or those of immediate Scots descent (at least three of whom have captained England - Mike Denness, Douglas Jardine and Tony Greig) one who was widely regarded as the best batsman in the world - Archie Jackson (Australia, born in Kilmarnock) - and another who definitely was (Graeme Pollock, South Africa). These were either Scots born and bred or the offspring of parents who were.

As for the USA, interacting here with OC Richard, cricket was the most popular sport in the USA before the civil war, when the increased pace of life occasioned by industrialization, together with large scale immigration from southern Europe, led to its rapid replacement by baseball (the two had common origins). Today it is amongst the most widely played at recreational level in places like New York City where there are large populations of immigrants from the subcontinent. It is the second most widely played sport in the world, boasting the most used international website www.cricinfo.com --- where was that started??? Yes, in the USA!

[O'Callaghan]

Both cricket and baseball were played both sides of the Atlantic at one time. One of the English soccer (association football) teams, I forget which one, still calls it's stadium 'the baseball ground', as that is the sport that was originally played there. Somehow, cricket died out in America (although there are certainly amateur cricket teams, such as the one in Bowie, Maryland), and baseball died out in the UK. Cricket is a little slow. The pace is comparable to angling (fishing), but don't forget that there are people who like to fish, LOL! It can be very relaxing to watch a village team, with a pint of bitter (beer) at your side.

Now, the Scots are more into tossing the caber and putting the shot than cricket, but as others have pointed out, there have been some fine Scottish players. The players don't tend to wear kilts, although the traditional whites seem to be on the way out as well, but there's no reason atall not to wear a kilt to watch the game. I'd say comfort was the number one consideration.