Scotland head coach Shane Burger reckons his team are showing their mature side after drawing with the Netherlands.
After tasting defeat in Wednesday’s Rotterdam ODI, the Saltires redeemed themselves with a six-wicket win a day later.
Alasdair Evans and George Munsey were particular standouts and, while he still wants to see the side improve, Burger praised what he called the team’s increasing “maturity”.
“If I’m being totally honest we’re not where we want to be from a performance point of view. It was not the sort of brand (of cricket) we necessarily want to be playing,” said Burger.
“But if I take the wicket into context – and how we need to play on that type of wicket – then we saw a far more mature performance in terms of winning a cricket game on Thursday.
“We’re a team that wants to score 300 plus in an ODI. That’s the brand of cricket we want to be playing.
“But the nature of the wicket we played on in the Netherlands isn’t going to let you do that.
“We have to give the Dutch credit too. They bowled and executed really well.”
Full steam ahead
Next on the agenda for the Saltires is the ICC World Cup League Two matches against Nepal and Namibia in July.
Scotland sit third in the table – behind Oman and the United States – with the top three sealing a spot at the 2023 Cricket World Cup.
Burger said: “Those fixtures are confirmed, although in the current climate it’s ever changing, day by day with Covid-19.
“Those games are going to be going ahead – eight ODIs – it’s just where they’re going to be played that has to be confirmed.
A huge thanks from all of us at Cricket Scotland to everyone at the @KNCBcricket and @VOCRotterdam who helped us to make the matches happen this week. It has been great to get back out there playing and we hope to see you all again soon 🏏 🇳🇱 🏴 pic.twitter.com/HcutQ1Vc8G
— Cricket Scotland (@CricketScotland) May 20, 2021
“So we’re looking forward to those. It’s effectively qualification for the World Cup so we’ll need to go try to win those eight games. After that it will be all systems focusing on Twenty20.”
Despite the six-week-long gap between international meet-ups, Burger is delighted his men will be able to get back into action at regional level.
He added: “The guys have a regional series to look forward to so they’ll get to play a lot of cricket at the weekends and we’ll still be training throughout the week as we build up towards the next phase.
“It’s all systems go on 50-over cricket for the next month or so.”
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