Scotland face one of the tournament favourites Pakistan in Sharjah today as their ICC Men’s T20 World Cup campaign comes to an end, looking to cause one final upset in the competition and return home with one Super 12 victory under their belt.
A heavy defeat against India on Friday was disappointing for Kyle Coetzer’s team, but he believes that his side learned many lessons from the experience of playing against some of the best cricketers in the world.
“I firmly believe having to go through that and go through some of these performances out here to realise how far and how much further the T20 format has developed, even since the last time we played in it, which was 2016, I think.
“We didn’t manage to get through the group stages then, but we did this time around. So we’re sure our development is there. But that the development of the game is moving at an amazing rate.
“And just the conversations following the game versus India have been positive; the fact that we’re so disappointed losing the manner in which we did and the opportunities that were created to go and speak to some of the finest players in the world yesterday was a real special moment. The guys have learned more in the last two or three games than they have in probably the last three, four years.”
Pakistan are unbeaten in the competition and have already qualified for the semi-finals. Coetzer knows that they might present his team’s biggest challenge yet, but knows that his side are capable of causing an upset.
“We have to go in there respecting them but also willing to go and try and take them on, too. I think we’ve taken a few learnings from our last couple of games and some special learnings from the India game.
“We need to be prepared to put on a show in our last game. It’s our last opportunity for a little while to play a game of cricket together. It’s been a good seven weeks or so as a group, and we’re extremely proud of what we’ve achieved. A few doors left open that we didn’t quite go through, I think, but that’s for us to deal with when we go home, and we have to deal with that and be willing to improve.”
Scotland v Pakistan starts at 2pm UK time with coverage on Sky Sports and BBC Radio and regular updates on the Cricket Scotland Twitter feed.
