Richie reckons we can build on form
Richie Berrington believes Scotland can convert their 50-over form to the T20 stage when they launch their World Cup bid in Tasmania tomorrow.
The Scots face a daunting task against star-studded West Indies as they look to claim another bigname scalp.
Berrington’s boys pulled off a shock at last year’s global event when they beat Bangladesh to qualify for the Super-12 stage for the first time.
However, they have played just three matches in the short format since that tournament in the UAE and Oman, losing heavily to New Zealand twice and beating the Netherlands in their only warm-up game before facing the Windies.
Their summer, though, featured some stunning performances in the 50-over World Cricket League 2 and Berrington insists that will stand them in good stead this week when they also face Ireland and Zimbabwe.
The skipper said: “Obviously we haven’t played as much T20 as we would have liked and it didn’t help that our second warm-up match here was rained-off.
“But we had a couple of good fixtures in the home summer against a really strong New
Zealand side and that was obviously useful – we certainly took a lot of learnings from that.
“We’ll also take a lot of confidence from the whiteball cricket we played – we’re certainly in a strong position in terms of the 50-over stuff.
“Hopefully we can build on that form and, of course, some of the performances we put in at last year’s T20 World Cup.
“The guys are certainly looking forward to the challenge and I think we will have quite a few Scottish fans behind us in Hobart.”
Meanwhile, Berrington will stretch his remarkable world record of 72 consecutive T20 international appearances in tomorrow’s match – a run going back to February 2010.