Introduction before contribution from Jack –
If Cricket Scotland had any champagne sitting at CS HQ at Ravelston then they would have been thoroughly justified in popping a cork or 2 and celebrating the last minute invite to Scotland to replace Bangladesh in the T20 World Cup. As Bangladesh made demands around where they played their games, and discovered they were mere minnows in the power games of the ICC, Scotland were ready to leap like a salmon and book flights to Kolkata. Kolkata is twinned with Dhaka (the capital of Bangladesh) but the ties don’t appear to be strong enough to persuade Bangladesh to fly for an hour to pick up the hefty cheque for participation.
Enter Scotland, who will be more undercooked than frozen chicken on a charcoal barbecue on the artificial pitch at Groats Road, to pick up the financial sticking plaster to hopefully repair the reasons behind their inability to qualify automatically in the first place.
Scotland will start the tournament against the West Indies tomorrow and will also play England and Nepal, plus they will have the opportunity to avenge their defeat to Italy in the qualifiers. Scotland had started preparing for internationals in March and have had 2 warm up matches, and it feels like a bit of a ‘free hit’ for new Coach Owen Dawkins.
Over to Jack Nixon who has sat through many a Scotland game, notebook in hand, and will be relishing the prospect of Cricket and Rugby taking up TV time in February.
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”Hopes and Fears for Scotland in the T20 World Cup.”
The news that Scotland are to replace Bangladesh in the T20 World Cup in India will almost certainly have evoked mixed emotions among supporters who have hopes of seeing their team perform regularly on the world stage.
Firstly, there will be genuine delight at their team getting another chance to mix it with the big boys, followed almost immediately by the fear of failure, as has been the case in so many tournaments in which they have participated, going back to the 1999 ODI World Cup in which they had a golden opportunity to progress after two of their group games were scheduled to be played in Edinburgh.
Ironically, it was against Bangladesh at the Grange when they badly fluffed their lines, leading to a spell of great doubt, if not in the minds of the players, but in the eyes of their supporters. In fact, rather like the stuttering progress the national football team usually makes.
The hope was always there, if not the delivery, until on one magical occasion in June 2018, again at the Grange, a Scottish cricket team did what most thought was the ultimate, even the impossible. Outplaying England in a thriller was surely the launching pad, especially as they batted first, scoring over 300 runs in the process, and then holding their collective nerve in front of an ecstatic home crowd to win a classic encounter.
The bonus for North East cricket was in having three products of the local area in the team; a feature that the North East failed to make a marketing tool of for youngsters in the region. But all that’s history. We must look to the future; this despite our lack of resources, while making good use of this call up. Again the football parallel comes to mind. In 1992 Denmark were late call ups for Yugoslavia who had to drop out of the Euros for political reasons. To everyone’s surprise the Danes went on to win the tournament. So let’s be positive.
Matt Cross and Michael Leask, two of the North East contingent are still in the squad, and like a number of others available to Scotland, are experienced enough to ensure the big achievers in the competition give them the respect they deserve.
T20 is so different to all the other formats, getting onto the front foot early is something George Munsey does with the best of them, while Brandon McMullen is good enough to create ripples in the big pool with both bat and ball.
Time will tell, but most of all, let’s hope the team enjoy this bonus handed to them and make us all proud, setting an example for all those youngsters out there who might just be leading the charge in years to come.
Jack Nixon