SALTIRES bosses are planning a series of top quality fixtures after being omitted from England's new county set-up.
Cricket Scotland chief executive Roddy Smith last night revealed that Scotland won't be included in English cricket's revamped domestic structure from 2014. It means Pete Steindl's side will be denied eight games against quality opposition.
However, Smith believes matches against top international sides, including Australia, will help fill the void.
"Australia are already on our schedule for next summer and we hope to have two additional games against full members in 2013," he said. "The ICC are placing a huge emphasis on more games between the top associates and full members and their A teams; we will benefit by this and also more international games against our direct peers."
Of the ECB's decision to omit the Saltires from their new CB50 tournament, Smith added: "CS have known for some time that there was a real possibility that the Saltires would not be included in a new ECB domestic 50-over competition from 2014. Indeed we have had a number of discussions with the ECB about this. Cricket Scotland had put forward to the ECB that ongoing participation in their domestic structure was not a priority."
Steindl, who had originally assumed the Saltires would participate in the new CB50, said: "My priority is ensuring that the players get a full programme of quality cricket that will challenge them."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article