Photo Credit: Cricket Scotland
Kyle Coetzer believes Scotland need to experience days like their comprehensive defeat to India in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup to get to where they want to be in the future.
Scotland’s chances of reaching the semi-finals were already over before the game following defeats to Afghanistan, Namibia and New Zealand in their first three Super 12 matches.
And cricket powerhouse India delivered a near-flawless display in Dubai to hand Scotland their fourth defeat in a row, winning with eight wickets and 81 balls to spare.
But while Coetzer was naturally disappointed with the result, he admitted his team – ranked 14th in the ICC MRF Tyres T20 Team Rankings – will learn a lot from the quality of their opposition.
“The experience is everything for our group of players and our organisation,” he said.
“Today’s result didn’t go the way we wanted but we have to go through days like today to see the better days later on, further down the road so it’s important for our guys to experience that.
“It was important for them to see the high class that was on show today from the Indian team. We were certainly not at the races ourselves but I think they forced us to not be at the races.
“That was high class execution from India and I’m absolutely extremely proud of the guys but we’ve got a lot of learning to do and we have to go through days like this to improve.
“If you stack up the number of games some of those players have played in comparison to what we have in T20 cricket as well as these conditions and using the skills on show that they showed today, we were always going to be up against it.
“They showed how to use the surface, how to bowl and execute their yorkers, the spinners had variation, plenty of mystery about some of their balls and when you face something like that for the first time which we did it was always going to be hard.
“Not to say that I don’t back every one of our players because I really do, I think we have a fantastic group of players and will just go from strength to strength from this.”
Scotland face already-qualified Pakistan in their final match on Sunday and having already achieved their best ever T20 World Cup performance, Coetzer wants his side to finish on a high.
“We’re going to go into that game as full of confidence as we possibly can,” he said. “We took a few heavy punches today that’s for sure and the guys will be hurting but we need to pick ourselves up.
“We need to be prepared to put on a show in our last game, it’s our last opportunity for a little while to play a game of cricket together and it’s been a good seven weeks or so as a group.
“We’re extremely proud of what we’ve achieved and a few doors left open that we didn’t quite go through but that’s for us to deal with when we go home and be willing to improve.
“We know where the bar is as I keep saying now and that’s where we need to get to so it’s an eye-opener at some stages but I’m proud of this group and where we’ve got to at the moment.”
Scotland’s chief tormentor was Ravindra Jadeja, who took a T20I career best of three for 15 to restrict Coetzer’s men to just 85, and the spinner said the wicket was ideal to bowl on.
“My role was the same, to take wickets in the middle overs and whenever I get an opportunity to try and bowl how I usually do, we can’t change our plans because it’s Scotland,” he said.
“We just looked to bowl in good areas because the ball was gripping, turning and spinning so I think the key was to bowl in the right areas as a spinner and as a fast bowler and let the wicket do the job.”
And Virat Kohli believes India have rediscovered their mojo after seeing his team’s impressive performance on his birthday to keep their semi-final qualification hopes alive.
“A dominant performance. It was something we were striving to do again. I don’t want to say too much about today because we know how we can play,” he said.
“These little things in T20 cricket matter and we’re glad to be back in our mojo. We spoke about 100-120 max but we restricted them to a total that allowed us to leapfrog everyone else.
“If you look at our practice games as well, the guys have been batting like that. Two overs of cricket like that and the momentum of the tournament could have been completely different.
“We basically broke it down to the fact that we couldn’t get away at all in those two games, two overs could have made the difference and put us on the different track.”
