The Scotland Women’s U19 squad began what could be memorable 2024 season with a trip to the Bradfield College festival last week.
Fourteen players spent a week together near Reading training, bonding as a team and playing four fixtures in four days, as preparations began for the ICC U19 Women’s World Cup Qualifier, which takes place in Aberdeen in August.
Scotland will face Netherlands across three matches for a place at the 2025 ICC Women’s U19 World Cup, taking place in Malaysia and Thailand next January.
Leading the squad for the first time was new U19 Women’s Head Coach Kari Carswell, assisted by Charlotte Dalton-Howells and with welcome input from Middlesex coach and bowling specialist Nicki Little.
The players were also the first to reap the benefits of Cricket Scotland’s new partnership with FabLIttleBag, who are providing period supportive products to the Pathway programme.
Kari Carswell said:
“Playing in the festival gave us a great opportunity to get out on grass early in the season, especially with the recent weather here. There would have been no chance of us doing that in Scotland, so it was good for the players to put into practice what they’d been working on over the winter in game scenarios against players we’d never played against.
“It was nice to get four games of cricket in during such a short space of time, but it was also useful for me and the rest of the coaching group to look at the squad and see what they can do and how we want to play, and start to try and formulate some plans as we move through to the main part of our season.
“All in all, it was a really positive experience and exercise. There’s great facilities at Bradfield, and to play against opposition that we hadn’t faced before, meaning we had to work things out as a group of players was really exciting.
“We had some great performances, even though it was early season. It was really pleasing to see some of the batters score some runs, but also watch our bowlers hit their lines and lengths and pick up some wickets.”
