Photo Credit: Cricket Scotland
On Thursday, the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup Qualifier gets underway in Abu Dhabi, with Scotland set to face Uganda under the lights at the Tolerance oval.
However, whilst the ultimate goal is to qualify for a first ever Women’s World Cup, that will firmly be at the back of the minds of Scotland’s players on Thursday, with their full focus on beating Uganda.
Head Coach Craig Wallace is expecting a ‘dogfight’ over the next couple of weeks in the fight for the final two spots at this year’s T20 World Cup, but believes that his side are in a good position to succeed on the field in Abu Dhabi.
He said: “We obviously came a couple of weeks ago and had a couple of one day games, which were brilliant prep for us to play against quality teams and get some one day cricket under our belt, and it gave us some really good time on the field, which was ideal.
“Probably the most pleasing thing so far, everybody’s contributed, the bowlers have been brilliant, the whole batting line up have contributed, had time in the middle and been winning games, so it’s going very well so far.
“I think at the moment we’ve got a little bit of momentum going, I’m a big believer in just continuing that as much as we can, but we’re pretty clear that we’ve won a few games, but Uganda will be a really hard test and we need to keep behaving as we’ve been behaving on and off the pitch until then, and during that game.
“If we don’t then we’ll be in a dogfight.”
The cut-throat nature of qualifying tournaments is something that much of the squad have experienced before, as has Craig Wallace during his career as a player, and he believes their experiences together can help them throughout the next fortnight.
“It’s a World Cup Qualifier, from my experience playing in them, they’re an absolute dogfight, they’re hard. Although we’ve won four or five games here, it’s going to be completely different, it’s a whole new level of intensity.
“It’s more about taking the experiences we’ve had in the last six months, I think we’ve grown so much as a team, in terms of how we’ve been behaving and with each other, not trying to put as much pressure on ourselves to try and qualify for big events, and just literally try and take every day, game by game.”
“It (qualifying for the World Cup) is obviously the goal, and we have to acknowledge it, but I definitely know we’re not overemphasising it, it’s playing Uganda on Thursday that’s the most important thing right now.”
You can watch the full interview with Craig on our YouTube channel HERE.
Scotland play their first game against Uganda at Tolerance Oval at 19:30 (16:30 BST). You can watch all of the action live and free on icc.tv.
