Muscat: Shakib Al Hasan became the leading wicket-taker in Twenty20 internationals but Scotland successfully defended 140 against Bangladesh in the T20 World Cup in Muscat, Oman.
Shakib took 2-17, as he moved to 108 wickets and overtook Sri Lanka’s Lasith Malinga, during Scotland’s 140-9.
After being put in to bat Scotland made a slow start and lost captain Kyle Coetzer for a duck, but recovered to 45-1, before losing five wickets for just eight runs in 25 balls, to slip to 53-6.
Greaves then shared 51 with Martin Watt, who made 22, and 27 with Josh Davey to work Scotland up to a defendable total.
Chris Greaves, Player of the Match, said, ‘We were in a tough situation. The thought was to rebuild and see where we can get from there. Unbelievable that I could be that person (to contribute), incredible. With the score on the board you got something to bowl at. The power-hitting right through our side is incredible. So yeah, once we got that total, with our bowling line-up, we backed it and… great game. It was my day. There would be many other days that any one of us could do well. Glad that I contributed. Incredible to be a Scottish cricketer today. So many words I could put to use. Enjoyable. Take one day at a time and hopefully many more wins to come.’
Losing captain Mahmudullah, said, ‘ I think the wicket was quite good and 140 was gettable. We were missing that one big over in the middle. Bowlers did their job really well but the batting unit weren’t good enough tonight. (If Bangladesh were complacent when Scotland were 53/6) Don’t think so, we were just one wicket away. Credit goes to their batters, they had a good finish. Yeah, when you can’t chase 140, there needs to be a look-in, need to correct the mistakes. We still need to be positive and figure out where we made mistakes, and not try to repeat them. Beautiful wicket to bat on, fantastic ground and crowd, we need to pull our socks up and play better cricket.’
Scotland skipper Kyle Coetzer, said, ‘ Credit to the Bangladesh bowlers, they showed high class skills. They did blow us away a bit. But you can’t count any team out in T20s. We had a lot of belief in our batting depth, we do feel we can all hit the ball a long way. Greaves and Watt showed it. It was tricky, there was plenty of dew. I felt our fielders tackled it well apart from myself, all credit to them. It (lower order fightback) just shows that we can win a game from any position. We fought back with some great knocks and this is a great confidence builder. We understand that we have to play extremely well to beat sides. We certainly didn’t play to our full potential tonight against a good Bangladesh side. We’ll do what we do after winning games, and maybe de-brief at some point tomorrow. Huge togetherness amongst our crowd. That’s one of the most important things that we need when we want to get across the line under pressure. Everyone backs each other. Really proud of the guys. We continually keep proving to ourselves that we’re capable.’
