What Has Gone Wrong With Scotland In The SUPER-12 Stage?

If there was a team among the associated nations whom people were expecting to show some real fight on the field in the super twelve stage of the t20 world cup, it was Scotland. The reason behind this expectation was their outstanding performance in the group stage, where they won all their games; the most famous one being a thumping victory over Bangladesh.

But, their journey in this mega event hasn’t been the ideal one since then. They have lost all their matches in the super twelve stage so far and they couldn’t even put up a fight against the teams like Namibia and Afghanistan. This shows that something is definitely wrong with Scotland. Let’s analyze a few key points to find the reasons behind such a poor performance.

Scotland’s batting in the powerplay phase has been nothing short of horrible. Their batters have scored at a SR of just 90.74 and they have lost ten wickets in this particular phase in the three super twelve games they have played so far. If we exclude their last game against New Zealand, their average and SR with the bat in the first six overs get reduced to 5.88 and 73.61. Their batting order was demolished within no time against Afghanistan and Namibia, which resulted in two massive defeats for them in these two games.    

The major reason behind such a poor performance with the bat is the performance of their experienced batters. Scotland had a lot of hopes from their experienced batters like Kyle Coetzer, George Munsey, Calum MacLeod, Richie Berrington etc. But, all of them have failed to play impactful knocks in most of the games. The table below describes the abysmal returns of this quartet in the tournament so far.

If we exclude their performances in the group stage games against Bangladesh, PNG and Oman, these numbers look even poorer.

The wicket-keeper batsman Matthew Cross has been nothing exceptional either. He has scored 46 runs at an average of just over fifteen and an extremely poor SR of 73.01 in the super twelve stage.

Scotland managed to cross 100-run mark against Namibia and fought decently against New Zealand, only because of the valiant efforts from Michael Leask. Nobody has stood up for them in the batting department apart from Leask in the super twelve stage. Thus, they have failed to contribute collectively with the bat, which seems to be their biggest concern at the moment.

Now let’s talk about their bowling. Scotland managed to restrict all their opponents to a total lower than 150 on all three occasions in the group stage. The biggest factor responsible for such an impressive performance was their bowling in the powerplay. But in the super twelve stage, they have neither picked early wickets nor controlled the flow of runs. The drastic difference between their performance in the powerplay in the group stage and the same in the super twelve stage is evident from the table below.

The table shows the serious decline in their bowling in the first six overs. The Scottish bowlers conceded more than fifty runs inside the powerplay against Afghanistan and New Zealand, which provided those teams a great start and they were able to post challenging totals like 190 and 172 respectively.

All in all, they haven’t got good starts with both bat and ball in all these games and have failed to make a comeback from bad positions. A lot more was expected from them after their clinical performance in the group stage. But unfortunately, they haven’t lived up to our expectations in the super twelve stage. They still have two games to play for their pride and we really hope they give both India and Pakistan a run for their money.