Cricket Scotland has today announced the squad to travel to Papua New Guinea for round 6 of the Intercontinental Cup and World Cricket League Championship matches.
The squad will spend a week in the Gold Coast in Australia where they will play two games against Auckland as part of their preparation for Port Moresby.
When they arrive in the capital of PNG they contest the four-day Intercontinental Cup match starting on the 1st October before playing two 50 over WCL matches.
Kyle Coetzer will lead the side for tour and will have Sussex pace-man Stuart Whittingham at his disposal for the first time since the win over Sri Lanka at Beckenham in May.
They will face a side with former Yorkshire coach Jason Gillespie at the helm and currently sit second in the World Cricket League table with the visiting Scots a point behind in third.
The sides haven’t played each other since the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier, where Preston Mommsen scored 94 to give the Scots a 52-run win at the Bert Sutcliffe Oval.
On the announcement, Scotland Head Coach Grant Bradburn said, “With the National side having been dispersed throughout the UK summer since the Zimbabwe series, everyone is itching to come back together as a team for the PNG series. As always, the players will be greeted with fitness testing first up on assembly in Edinburgh, which will no doubt highlight the excellent physical work that’s gone in during this training block.
No one has been to Papua New Guinea before and we are fully expecting this tour to be an extremely tough challenge. A week’s preparation on the Gold Coast prior to PNG including two games against the Auckland Aces, and will be valuable prep time both on and off the field. Despite not playing a lot of International cricket in 2017, beating two full members in May/June was a major achievement that has given the players great confidence.
Consistency of performance is not where we want it to be yet and is something we are very conscious of improving over the next three months.
The players are all very familiar now with their roles and the positive brand of cricket that as a team we want to bring. We all look forward to bringing that confidence and entertaining brand of cricket to PNG who will have the advantage of home conditions.”
Scotland Squad:
Kyle Coetzer (captain), Con de Lange, Richie Berrington, Matthew Cross, Josh Davey, Alasdair Evans, Michael Leask, Calum MacLeod, George Munsey, Safyaan Sharif, Chris Sole, Craig Wallace, Mark Watt, Stuart Whittingham.
Fixtures
Sunday 24th September: Warm up – Auckland, 50 over match
Tuesday 26th September: Warm up – Auckland, 50 over match
Intercontinental Cup Sunday 1 – 4 October, Port Moresby
World Cricket League 6th October (reserve 7th) Port Moresby
World Cricket League 8th October (reserve 9th), Port Moresby
