Scotland won their first-ever match at an ICC global event
Image courtesy of: ESPNcricinfo
Scotland’s winless drought at ICC global events came to an end on Saturday as they cruised past Hong Kong by eight wickets via the Duckworth-Lewis method.
Even though both teams were out of contention for the Super 10 stage of the tournament, Scotland were looking to break their 20-match losing streak that stretched back to the 1999 World Cup, while Hong Kong were on the hunt for their first win of the competition.
Opting to bat first, Hong Kong found themselves in all sorts of trouble as they were reduced to 33/3 in the seventh over.
However, a 49-run partnership between Mark Chapman and Anshuman Rath gave Hong Kong a glimmer of hope.
Matt Machan provided the breakthrough for Scotland as Rath was stumped off his bowling for 21.
Hong Kong captain Tanwir Afzal was the next to go before Chapman fell to Mark Watt for an excellent knock of 40, which came off 41 balls and included one boundary and a six.
A quickfire 17 towards the end of the innings by Nizakat Khan saw Hong Kong finish on 127/7 off their 20 overs.
Machan was the pick of the bowlers with two wickets, while Watt, Josh Davey, Gavin Main and Con de Lange chipped in with one wicket apiece.
Due to the heavy rain that fell after Hong Kong’s innings, Scotland’s target became 76 runs from 10 overs.
Despite losing opener George Munsey early on, Scotland wicketkeeper Matthew Cross smashed a quickfire 22 to put his side in the driver’s seat.
With Cross back in the pavilion, Kyle Coetzer and Machan mopped up the remaining runs and guided Scotland to victory with 12 balls to spare.
Nadeem Ahmed and Aizaz Khan claimed one wicket each.
Afzal was less than impressed with his side’s performance, and said: “Disappointed with the result. We showed we can do much better than this, but we will take a lot of positives, regroup and work hard on our weakness. We have an I-Cup game against Ireland coming up, that will be a good game.”
Scotland skipper Preston Mommsen was thrilled to bring the drought to an end, and said: “The boys are chuffed. Hopefully this will free us up, we have to keep qualifying for these kind of tournaments. We’re pretty quiet from here on in, summer coming up but not many games unfortunately. We want to play more cricket. Hopefully our performances here has shown what we are capable of. It’s momentous, a few cold ones will be opened tonight, hopefully it will be a good one.”
Machan was named Man of the Match, and said: “Great day for Scottish cricket, we’ve got the monkey off our back. Everyone is happy. We should have won two or three games at the World Cup last year. We didn’t play the best cricket this week, but happy to have won today. We wanted to restrict them to 120 odd, then had wickets in hand and got over the line.”