Player of the match Calum MacLeod praised stand-in skipper Matthew Cross for leading Scotland to victory on the ground where he started his career.
The Saltires defeated United Arab Emirates (UAE) by 64 runs at Mannofield in the first of four Cricket World Cup League 2 matches.
Cross, who started his career with Aberdeenshire, was captaining his country for the first time in the absence of the injured Richie Berrington.
MacLeod said: “I’m really proud of Matthew Cross as an Aberdeenshire boy captaining Scotland on his home ground.
“I’ve been room-mates with him since he came into the Scotland squad.
“He captained really well and to watch that performance is one that Matthew can be really proud of and one Aberdeenshire can be really proud of.
“Hopefully we have Richie back soon, but it just shows the depth we have now.”
‘OK without being great’
MacLeod was named player of the match after notching 76 in Scotland’s total of 262 all out.
Reflecting on his innings, he added: “It was OK without being great, I don’t think I ever got in the position where I took the game away from them.
“That would’ve been nice to really take the game away from them and get us to 280 or 300.
“To go through the innings, bat at four with Richie not playing and take that little bit more responsibility through the innings, I was pretty pleased.”
Good start to Aberdeen series
Scotland face USA on Saturday, UAE on Sunday and USA again next Wednesday.
MacLeod was pleased to start the series with a win and is also happy to be playing in Aberdeen for the first time since 2019.
He said: “It’s a good start, we did feel 260 on a good wicket was maybe 15 under par.
“But Chris Sole’s spell was as fast as I’ve seen in a Scotland shirt, Kyle Coetzer and I were racking our brains trying to remember a faster, more hostile spell.
“We couldn’t come up with one, so we’re quite excited to be standing at slip watching that.
“Through the middle overs, Mark Watt and Hamza Tahir have been exceptional for us for a long time.
“It’s amazing to be playing in Aberdeen with the sun out and if it’s like this all week then we’re really excited.
“We enjoy coming up here to play. If you speak to any of the players, we’ll mention the word intent and we saw that with both bat and ball.”
