Scotland at home in Dunedin
16-Feb-2015
Scotland begin their World Cup with a daunting fixture against New Zealand, but the venue of their match could give them the feeling of playing at home. As Nick Hoult writes in the Daily Telegraph, Dunedin is the old Gaelic name for Edinburgh, and even produces its own haggis. More pertinently, New Zealand also have cricketing reasons to be wary of Scotland.
Of the associate nations, the patronising term cricket gives to non Test playing countries, they start the tournament in the best form. Scotland thrashed Ireland by 179 runs and scored 310 against the West Indies, losing by just three runs.
Last year they played a New Zealand XI in Lincoln, near Christchurch, and were beaten by just one run. That New Zealand team included five players who appeared against Sri Lanka at the weekend including Brendon McCullum, Daniel Vettori, Corey Anderson and Luke Ronchi.
They have bags of county experience through Northamptonshire's Kyle Coetzer, Matt Machan of Sussex and Durham's Calum MacLeod. In total nine of the 15 man squad have played professional cricket in England and Scotland now employs players on its own full time contracts. Gone are the days when Scotland players had to beg time off from day jobs to play in a World Cup. MacLeod is the player tipped to catch the eye in Australia. He is the first Gaelic speaker to appear in a Test match having been a sub fielder for England in the Ashes series of 2009 but he was released by Warwickshire when he could not recover his bowling action after it was reported by umpires while playing for Scotland. He rebuilt his career as a batsman in Scotland and led his country to World Cup qualification with a 62-ball 113 against the UAE and 175 against Canada.