WITH a little help from an unexpected source, Scotland got their ICC World Twenty20 qualifying tournament back on track with a comfortable win over Kenya.
It restores them to the hunt for for a place in the quarter finals of the competition next week.
They may even have the capacity to turn things around completely and go on to win the tournament, maintained Matthew Cross, the wicketkeeper who was also his team's leading run-getter with an aggressive knock of 45. "It is going to be difficult for us to finish top of the pool now, given the results, but I hope we can finish second or third. Hopefully we can go on from there to the final of the tournament and win it," he said.
This result certainly puts them back in contention, especially with the unexpected assistance from Oman, who had never won a match in the World T20 competition until the weekend. They repeated the feat yesterday in defeating the Netherlands, one of Scotland's strongest rivals. It drops the Dutch to fifth in Pool B, level on points with Scotland, who are now third, but with a considerably worse net run rate.
The victory resettles the Scots after a morale-sapping weekend where they lost to both Afghanistan and Holland and dropped to fifth in the pool, in danger of needing the repechage system to have any hope of qualifying for the main tournament in India next year and out of the running for any chance of the final.
They had started this game still looking shellshocked , allowing Kenya to blitz off to a dream start with runs coming at 12 an over for the opening spell as Irfan Karim, the Kenya opener, went berserk, hitting the opening delivery for six and continuing the assault on the Scots bowlers.
The problem for the East Africans is that when it came to batting Karim and his partner, Nehemiah Odhiambo, turned out to be about all they had to offer. When they went within 10 runs of each other, the run rate went from crazy to dead in a space of a few deliveries. Scotland's bowlers, led by Michael Leask, the spinner who finished with two wickets for only 12 runs, and Con de Lange kept the pressure on and realistically Kenya's total of 141 never looked enough.
"We had a couple of tough games and had to come back strong," Cross added. "Not only have we won but won well, which is important. We had played against two teams who played very, very well on the day. A couple of guys got big scores - I know we dropped a couple of catches and maybe did not bowl as well as we would have liked but sometimes you just have to accept that other teams have played better than us and we were just not quite there. We backed ourselves to come out and pick it up from there.
"Kenya got off to a good start. They played well and deserved to be where they were but we always knew we could pull it back. They were a bit light on batting as a team and the spinners bowled awesomely, particularly Con de Lange, and pulled it back well, really controlling it."
Scotland did get an early shock when Kyle Coetzer was bowled without a run on the board, but quickly settled and never again looked in trouble, finishing with 31 balls spare. "It was nice to get some runs - a bit scratchy but the lads round me played really well, starting with [Calum] MacLeod and then [George] Munsey came out and did really well with Richie [Berrington] finishing things beautifully," Cross added.
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