Scotland Announce Squad For World Cup
©Cricket Scotland
The 15 players who originally set out on the recent five-week tour to Sharjah, Mombasa and Nairobi have been invited to travel to Barbados and St Kitts to take part in the cricket world’s top tournament.
The squad will be: John Blain, Dougie Brown (Warwickshire), Gavin Hamilton, Majid Haq (Ferguslie), Paul Hoffmann (Uddingston), Douglas Lockhart (West of Scotland), Ross Lyons (Clydesdale), Neil McCallum (Grange), Dewald Nel (Greenock), Navdeep Poonia (Warwickshire), Glenn Rogers (Stenhousemuir), Colin Smith (Aberdeenshire), Ryan Watson (Forfarshire, vice-captain), Fraser Watts (Greenock), Craig Wright (Greenock, captain).
National coach Peter Drinnen said: "We went to Kenya with two aims, first to qualify for the Twenty20 World Championship and also to inflict a first defeat on the host country. We achieved both these objectives, and it is therefore no surprise that we are endorsing the entire squad for the World Cup itself."
Roddy Smith, chief executive of Cricket Scotland, added: "These players have accumulated a high degree of experience and team bonding, both of which will be important in the difficult games ahead in the Caribbean. I am confident they will show Scottish cricket in a very favourable light. Our aim is to be competitive and to challenge the bigger nations, and this will be the real test for our players."
The squad will attend a farewell dinner in Edinburgh hosted Cricket Scotland’s major sponsors Lloyds TSB Scotland, on Thursday February 22, before departing for Barbados on February 26. There, they have three warm-up matches, against a local club select (March 2), a match against Sri Lanka (March 5) and a chance to avenge the recent defeats by Bangladesh before Christmas (March 8).
The competitive action begins in St Kitts against Australia (March 14), South Africa (March 20) and the Netherlands (March 22). Two of these four teams will qualify for the Super Eight stage of the World Cup.
