The Thursday Read (29th May): Scotland Men won't shy away from World Cup ambitions
Graeme Macpherson hears from inside the national camp ahead of their home schedule kicking off with the first of two 'A' friendlies against Nepal this afternoon.
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THERE is a cruel irony that Scotland’s cricketers will likely spend the next few weeks dodging the rain showers not long after a month-long spell during which the sun was splitting the sky almost every day. Such is life in this part of the world.
The summer season of home international cricket, however, will plough on regardless of the forecast, starting today with the first of two Scotland ‘A’ friendlies against Nepal leading into next week’s Cricket World Cup League 2 (CWCL2) series against the same opposition and the Netherlands, also at Forthill in Dundee.
From there the travelling circus will decant to the west and a T20I series at Clydesdale that will serve as a warm-up – for both the Scots and Dutch – for July’s T20 World Cup qualifier in the Netherlands.
Read more from The Inside Edge:
The Monday Wrap (26th May): most of the schedule beats the weather
The Thursday Read (22nd May): Scottish cricket’s financial balancing act
The Thursday Read (15th May): Fin McCreath on the long road to becoming an overnight sensation
Both these series on home soil are significant in their own right. CWCL2 can be something of a slog, a drawn-out process spanning several years and with series taking place all over the world.
Scotland won the previous iteration but, if anything, the challenge has gone up a notch since then with the introduction of the Dutch and Canada to the mix and the United States growing in strength as they look to take quick strides up the cricket rankings.
The top four in the eight-nation group will move forward to the final qualifier for the 2027 World Cup to be held in South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Scotland haven’t featured at a 50-over World Cup since 2015 but came close to qualifying for the last two editions only to narrowly miss out each time.
Encouragingly, the 2027 edition sees a move from 10 to 14 competing nations, giving the Scots huge incentive to make sure they are in the mix come qualifying. To get there, however, they must safeguard their spot in the top four of CWCL2 and a clean sweep over the Dutch and Nepal next week at Forfarshire would go a long way in helping in that regard, as Scotland head coach Doug Watson explained to The Inside Edge yesterday.
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