The Sunday News
Brandon Moyo, Sports Reporter
SCOTLAND have announced their 15-member squad that will take part in the upcoming 2023 Men’s Cricket World Cup Qualifiers that will be held in Zimbabwe next month.
The European nation made two changes to the squad that won the International Cricket Council (ICC) Cricket World Cup League 2 title in February which guaranteed them a spot in the upcoming qualifiers.
They brought in Alasdair Evans and Adrian Neill to replace Liam Naylor and the retired veteran Kyle Coetzer. Evans will be in line to play his first One Day International (ODI) since 2021 after signing a professional contract with Cricket Scotland for the 2023-2024 season. The World Cup qualifiers are scheduled to begin on 18 June and will be played across four venues in Harare and Bulawayo.
In a statement from Cricket Scotland, the team’s interim head coach, Doug Watson said coming to Zimbabwe for the qualifiers is a good opportunity for them and they have a fairly good squad which is a mixture of senior and young players who are not new to the highest level of the game.
He added that they will have to quickly adapt to the Zimbabwean conditions which will allow them to play their game.
Sikandar Raza with his ICC caps
“I think there’s a good mixture in this squad of youth and senior players who’ve been around a while — the likes of Richie and George, as well as some exciting young talent in Jack Jarvis and Chris McBride. It’s obviously a wonderful opportunity coming up in Zimbabwe, and the guys that we’ve selected are all really excited and fizzing to go.
“They know how tough the challenge is going to be. It’s moving into winter over there just now, and the conditions are changing, and will be quite spin-friendly, but the key thing will be for us to adapt to the conditions and approach the games the way we want to play them,” said Watson.
The Scotland squad will fly to Pretoria in South Africa on 3 June, for a pre-tournament training camp. They will also play two warm up games against Nepal and Netherlands, before travelling on to Zimbabwe. A total of 10 teams are expected to battle it out for the remaining two spots to the World Cup which will be held in India later this year. However, the final fixtures schedule for the Qualifiers is yet to be announced by ICC.
Scotland squad
Richie Berrington (captain), Matthew Cross, Alasdair Evans, Chris Greaves, Jack Jarvis, Michael Leask, Tom Mackintosh, Chris McBride, Brandon McMullen, George Munsey, Adrian Neill, Safyaan Sharif, Chris Sole, Hamza Tahir, Mark Watt. — Follow on Twitter @brandon_malvin.
