Scottish View: Naivety is met with inevitable thrashing (28 May 1999)

28 May 1999

Scottish View: Naivety is met with inevitable thrashing

Keith Graham

Perhaps it was the nightmare that was waiting to happen. But after pushing the Australians hard at Worcester and competing with Pakistan for 75 per cent of the game at Chester-le-Street, the wheels perhaps began to shoogle in Edinburgh against Bangladesh on Monday.

Was expectation too high against a Bangladesh team so convincingly beaten by the Scots a year ago? And did that defeat knock the wind out of Scottish sails?

Certainly, against the West Indies yesterday, there was revealed a naivety in first deciding to axe the old firm of Iain Philip and Bruce Patterson, then go in with a completely untried pair in Mike Allingham and Mike Smith and finally to decide to bat on winning the toss and thus expose the new pairing to the ferocity of Ambrose and Walsh.

Scottish captain George Salmond's explanation for such a mysterious decision was that the wicket looked good and, in his judgement, was unlikely to worsen during the game. He had hoped that his patchwork team could at least set the West Indies a decent target. Thus far in this competition, skippers have elected to field first without exception and it is unlikely that with the prospect of facing the West Indian pace pair, even captains of Test-playing nations would have bucked that trend.

In fact, Phil Simmons shared the new ball with Ambrose and jagged the ball about alarmingly off the seam as, inevitably, did Ambrose. The latter, predictably, also extracted some alarming bounce. The result was that the Scots, with middle order batsmen elevated above their station, capitulated.

In the end, it was a rout, the Scots bundled out for 68 and it was small consolation that John Blain removed Simmons from a leading edge and Stuart Williams lbw for a duck.

Salmond admitted that the techniques of his batsmen had been exposed as wanting at this the highest level; that this World Cup came perhaps too late for them as individuals to make the adjustments. Equally, he was full of praise for an attack which, apart from the last 10 overs against Wasim, had thus far, had a good World Cup.

The Scots must now rediscover their spirit for their final game in Edinburgh on Monday against New Zealand.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)