Scotland’s women have moved into pole position to qualify for the global qualifying tournament for the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup after a victory over Ireland, their second win in as many days, took them to the top of the standings at the European qualifying event in La Manga, Spain.
A six from captain Kathryn Bryce sealed a five-wicket win over the Irish with one over remaining after a tense run chase.
Scotland had lost the toss and bowled first. Led by an outstanding performance from 16-year-old Katherine Fraser who took three wickets for 14 runs, including two in two balls, the Wildcats held Ireland to 89/9.
Early in the Scotland innings, what had looked like a total which could be overhauled seemed to be slipping from their grasp as the slumped to 20/4 after 9 overs.
A captain’s inning from Bryce, who scored 46 off 58 balls, backed up by an impressive 22 off 19 from Becky Glen led Scotland to 92/5 and a famous victory over their rivals.
Scotland Head Coach Mark Coles was pleased to come away with a win, but sees plenty of areas for improvement: “I’m just immensely proud. We’ve made a lot of progress and that’s shown today. We bowled magnificently. Katherine Fraser was outstanding for a 16-year-old. And then we had a slow start with the bat. It was a bit messy, but Kathryn Bryce held in there. I gave her a few firm instructions that we needed to get going, and she did, so all credit to her. There’s a few things that we need to tidy up and it’s one step at a time with France and Germany still to play. Today we saw that if you put a team that’s expected to win under a bit of pressure then they can blow up. The girls are going to be singing Flower of Scotland loud and proud.”
Scotland will have a rest day on Saturday before facing Germany at 9.30am UK time on Sunday. The game will be live streamed on icc.tv.
