Following months of meticulous preparation at home, in Oman and in the UAE, Scotland finally take to the field on Sunday in their first match of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup where they take on Bangladesh in Muscat.
Coming off the back of two impressive warm-up match wins against the Netherlands and Namibia this week, the squad is raring to go in their first World Cup outing since 2016.
Bangladesh have beaten some big-name opposition in T20 cricket in recent months with wins over Zimbabwe, Australia and New Zealand, but lost their final warm-up match against Ireland this week.
Scotland Head Coach Shane Burger believes his side are in an excellent place going into the match against the group favourites.
“The matches agains the Netherlands and Namibia have obviously given us fantastic momentum going into our first World Cup match against a quality team like Bangladesh,” said Burger. “It’s allowed us to feel pressure and it’s allowed us to win big moments and know that we can get over the line in those moments. We’ve made mistakes, but we’ve also played some really good cricket over the past month.
“We’ve worked incredibly hard as a unit to not only prepare for this World Cup but to make sure we’ve given each player every single opportunity to be the best they can be at this tournament. We know that this team can deliver special performances and those are the standards that we’ve set. We believe that we can win every single game of cricket. We know that Sunday is going to be a very important game, but every single game is going to be as important as the last or the next.
“Bangladesh are a very good team. They possess many good skills variations, they bring power, they bring speed, they bring spin variations and they’re well equipped to handle different conditions and different types of pressures that certainly this tournament will throw at them. But we’ve looked into a lot of their strengths and weaknesses and we have a game plan that we’re going to throw out against them that we believe will work. We’re certainly going to have a real crack at them.”
Scotland captain Kyle Coetzer will lead the team tomorrow confident that his side is in a strong position to perform at their best when it matters.
“The team evolves over the years, especially by learning as much as you can coming from the environment that we come from and the challenges that we face going through qualifying tounrmanents and that really brings the group of players together,” explained Coetzer. “I genuinely believe that this is as strong and powerful a squad as we could have selected. We feel confident that we’re capable of putting in some strong performances with the bat, ball and in the field.”
The match begins at 3pm UK time on Sunday. All of Scotland’s matches will be shown live on Sky Sports with live radio commentary on BBC Five Live Sports Extra. Live updates will be available on the Cricket Scotland twitter feed.
Scotland’s Round One group also includes Papua New Guinea and hosts Oman, who also begin their campaign on Sunday. The top two from the group will progress to the Super 12 stage of the competition.
Scotland will play PNG on Tuesday at 11am UK time before their final group match against Oman on Thursday at 3pm.
