Scotland’s women have moved into pole position to qualify for the global qualifying tournament for the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup after a victory over Ireland, their second win in as many days, took them to the top of the standings at the European qualifying event in La Manga, Spain.

MATCH SUMMARY

Ireland Women 89/9 (20 ov)

Scotland Women 92/5 (19 ov)

Scotland Women won by 5 wickets

Scorecard

A six from captain Kathryn Bryce sealed a five-wicket win over the Irish with one over remaining after a tense run chase.

Scotland had lost the toss and bowled first. Led by an outstanding performance from 16-year-old Katherine Fraser who took three wickets for 14 runs, including two in two balls, the Wildcats held Ireland to 89/9.

Early in the Scotland innings, what had looked like a total which could be overhauled seemed to be slipping from their grasp as the slumped to 20/4 after 9 overs.

A captain’s inning from Bryce, who scored 46 off 58 balls, backed up by an impressive 22 off 19 from Becky Glen led Scotland to 92/5 and a famous victory over their rivals.

Scotland Head Coach Mark Coles was pleased to come away with a win, but sees plenty of areas for improvement: “I’m just immensely proud. We’ve made a lot of progress and that’s shown today. We bowled magnificently. Katherine Fraser was outstanding for a 16-year-old. And then we had a slow start with the bat. It was a bit messy, but Kathryn Bryce held in there. I gave her a few firm instructions that we needed to get going, and she did, so all credit to her. There’s a few things that we need to tidy up and it’s one step at a time with France and Germany still to play. Today we saw that if you put a team that’s expected to win under a bit of pressure then they can blow up. The girls are going to be singing Flower of Scotland loud and proud.

Scotland will have a rest day on Saturday before facing Germany at 9.30am UK time on Sunday. The game will be live streamed on icc.tv.