Short answer: It’s Scotland. It’s never sunny enough to play cricket.
Whilst most BUCS (British Universities and Colleges Sports) competitions start in October, cricket started on Wednesday, when the club travelled across the border to Durham. The north of England tends to have more of a fan base for the sport, including the hometown of Stirling Cricket Club’s President. Eliot Bunn, who’s played cricket since he was five, says that the sport is “massive” in Leeds. He added, “In the whole county of Yorkshire, cricket’s massive, but it is everywhere in England, really”.
Despite this, the sport is growing in Scotland and in Stirling, with the University going from one team of 15 members four years ago, to 40 members with two men’s teams and a women’s team today. Eliot said: “It’s definitely growing. Even the national team have had some recent success at the T20 World Cup, which has helped drive cricket”. Back in February, the Scottish national team beat Italy by 73 runs at the T20 World Cup in India, two days after beating the West Indies team by 35 runs.
The sport continues to grow thanks to Stirling’s international students, as players from countries where cricket is more popular continue to enrol at Stirling and join the cricket club. “So, the majority of the uni team do still tend to be people who aren’t Scottish. But you still see we’ve got a fair amount of Scottish players, but I’d say that there’s more of the club that aren’t [Scottish] than are”.
Other Scottish universities are also seeing a growth in cricket popularity, as Heriot-Watt has recently started a cricket team, and Aberdeen has started its second team. “It’s definitely growing, and you can see that that’s not just from our university.” Scotland has always had a presence at UK-wide competitions, as either St Andrews, the University of Edinburgh, or Stirling tend to compete “in that top league”.
Eliot says that the university and the Sports Union have been “brilliant” at supporting cricket as a small club, offering financial help for the teams to compete in wider competitions by paying for travel and accommodation. “Leeds is a good five or six-hour journey by coach, so the university has helped us with accommodation and finances.”
So, with popularity growing and help from the university available, why does cricket wait until people have started to go home for the summer to play competitively? Simple. It’s freezing out here.
“Cricket can’t be played for the winter, it’s a very summer-oriented sport. To be able to produce the pitches outside to be able to play on, you have to have good weather.”
“That’s another reason why it’s not very big in Scotland, it’s the weather. We do have an indoor season that goes, but it’s a very different game, like it’s six a side as opposed to 11 a side. It’s kind of there to keep clubs ticking over, but it’s certainly not the main point in your season.”
Cricket’s BUCS season lasts until the 27th of May.