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Scotland suffer heavy defeat at India chase semi-final spot

Cricket Scotland @CricketScotland
November 5, 2021 2 years
Scotland suffer heavy defeat at India chase semi-final spot
DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES - NOVEMBER 05: Players of India and Scotland shake hands following the ICC Men's T20 World Cup match between India and Scotland at Dubai International Cricket Ground on November 05, 2021 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by Michael Steele-ICC/ICC via Getty Images)

Scotland suffered a heavy eight-wicket defeat at the hands of India as the cricketing giants battled to stay in contention for a semi-final spot at the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.

Facing up to a formidable Indian bowling attack Scotland started well, but after losing openers Kyle Coetzer and George Munsey in the first six overs, struggled to build any partnerships and were dismissed for 85 off 17.4 overs. Munsey was the top scorer with 24 runs off 19 balls.

Needing to chase down the total quickly to improve their net run rate and maintain their hopes of reaching the semi-finals, India made short work of their reply reaching 89/2 off 6.3 overs, including 50 off 19 balls for opener KL Rahul.

Scotland Head Coach Shane Burger believes that the experience will be an important one for his team as they look to compete at this level more often: “When you get 85 runs it’s always going to be very tough to defend that and we know they’re going to come out and play the way they did. The learnings that we take from this are that we now understand where the bar is set in terms of international cricket and the level that you have to be at to be able to compete.

“You bank this as experience and we’ve now played one of the best teams in the world. This for them is very familiar territory whereas for us it’s very unfamiliar territory. But what these players will have got is the experience of a pretty packed stadium with a loud fanbase and putting yourself under pressure and you can never put a price on that experience. It’s not a time to get the heads down or to stop backing ourselves. We have another opportunity against Pakistan to come out and put in another performance. We need to take as much as we possibly can away from this.”

Captain Coetzer believes that his team will recover and are still capable of producing a win against Pakistan in their final match of the tournament on Sunday.

“I was a tough day at the office. We were outlasted in very department today. But the experience is everything for our group of players and our organisation. Obviously today’s result didn’t got the way we wanted, but we have to go through days like today to get to better things down the road. That was high class execution from India today. I’m still extremely proud of the guys but we’ve got a lot of learning to do,

“If you stack up the number of games that some of the players in that team have played in T20 cricket compared to us we were always going to be up against it. They showed how to use the surface, how to execute their yorkers. Their spinners had plenty of variation. Not to say that I don’t back our players because I do, we have a fantastic group of players and we’ll go from strength to strength after this. 

“We took a few heavy punches today and the guys will be hurting but we have to pick ourselves up and put on a show on Sunday.”

Scotland play their final match of the T20 World Cup on Sunday when they face Pakistan in Sharjah at 2pm UK time.  

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