Scotland captain Kyle Coetzer is worried people will be lost to cricket if no games can take place this summer.
The national leagues and cups have been cancelled because of coronavirus and there will be no local action, even in friendly form, before August 1 at the earliest.
A summer One-Day International (ODI) and T20 match against New Zealand next month have already been postponed with a T20 clash against Australia and Cricket World Cup League Two matches versus Namibia and Nepal set for the same fate.
If there’s no cricket of any form in Scotland this summer Saltires skipper Coetzer is concerned some won’t return to the game in 2021.
The Aberdonian said: “That’s certainly a concern if we go through this year without playing any cricket and you’ll get to next year and people will think ‘I might not play and do something else with my time’.
“That’s why it’s important to try to find a way to play some cricket if we can towards the end of the summer.
“Even if it’s friendly games it might just give people that spark to carry on playing and come back next season.
“You’re always concerned about the wellbeing of clubs, it can be hard enough in normal times without a pandemic.
“There is some support available to keep clubs afloat, you hope there is goodwill from people and people will continue to come back and pay their fees and keep growing the game.
“The best way to do that is for us at the top level to have a big game against somebody whether it’s New Zealand or Australia or someone else next summer and hopefully performing in a T20 World Cup (scheduled for October) whether it’s this year or next year.
“That’s what inspires people to play, you see it every year with Wimbledon, people start playing tennis and it’s the same with rugby when the Six Nations are on.
“We need to be able to create that by doing well at the highest level.”
It has seemed inevitable that Scotland’s summer international fixtures would be called off.
However, that doesn’t make it any less disappointing for Coetzer, who was going to be leading the nation in these matches.
But he does hope sides such as Australia and New Zealand will return to Scottish soil in the future.
Coetzer added: “It was inevitable and we could all see it happening. I know everyone was hoping things would quietly disappear and we’d get back to normal.
“But it hasn’t happened and the games are off, but it means we just have to think about what is ahead of us now and focus on that.
“The silver lining of it all is that when we do get back playing we know there should be plenty of cricket lined up for us.
“There seems to be reasonable relationships between Cricket Scotland and nations like New Zealand and Australia.
“It seems like they are hopeful these teams will come back at some stage.
“They will have to come over to play the likes of England and Ireland at some point again so we’ll try to take advantage of that and tag on some games which will be high spectacle games and give cricket in Scotland a boost by having some good teams here.”
