Published: Thursday, 16th October, 2008 08:50
Dunfermline Knights stalwart blasts national cricket chiefs
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CITY cricket supremo Tom Gibson has let rip at the sport’s Scottish bosses.
Gibson launched a scathing attack on officials at the Scottish National Cricket League after the league’s forum backed Dunfermline’s bid to change the league’s points system earlier this month.
The Dunfermline Knights had been on a crusade to overhaul the current method of allowing 10 points for a win but only two for abandoned matches after coming close to missing promotion last season.
Dunfermline finished second last season and were forced into a promotion play-off, which they won, despite losing just one match. Yet champions Stoneywood won the title after being beaten four times.
The Knights, and Gibson, complained loud and long that Stoneywood were champions by default as a result of having had fewer matches abandoned.
Dunfermline only lost five points on the pitch last year but even if they had finished with a 100 per cent record, they would still have been behind Stoneywood because too few points are awarded for abandoned games.
Gibson described that as a “nonsense” and at the forum’s latest meeting in Stirling on 5th October, 75 per cent of clubs agreed with him and backed a return to a fairer percentage system previously in place.
A precise points system for the new season, which starts on 26th April, has yet to be confirmed, however, and Gibson said, “It doesn’t mean to say it will be implemented. It will go to a competitions committee and that body is a law unto themselves.
“We’ve made a series of suggestions at the last three meetings which have been agreed but then the rules come out and they just do what they like.
“I have no faith in them whatsoever. They don’t listen to people.”
But Cricket Scotland say Gibson is “totally out of order”.
Administration manager for Cricket Scotland Stewart Oliver said, “Mr Gibson is very good at talking to the press and not to the people who can do anything about it.”
He said the competitions committee would meet on Tuesday to discuss the recommendations of the forum and said, “I cannot possibly contemplate that the committee will go back on that.
“They were asked by the clubs to come up with a couple of scenarios which could be implemented from the start of next season and that will be done.
“It will be a different system but what it will be precisely, at this stage I don’t know.”
Oliver dismissed the claim that the competitions committee didn’t listen to the clubs.
“The way in which these decisions are taken was changed by the clubs themselves at the AGM of 2002,” he explained.
“They wanted to give power to the competitions committee, all of whom are members of clubs in the National League and all of whom are elected at the AGM of Cricket Scotland.
“The implication that he makes that the committee is not accountable is totally out of order.”
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