A final scoreline of 3-1 across two matches each in T20/50-overs formats against Bath CC and Gloucestershire 2nd XI for Scotland “A” ended their short tour of Bath in UK.
The first day of their tour saw Scotland “A” take on both Bath CC and Gloucs 2nd XI in back-to-back T20 matches, which Scotland “A” won to start the tour on a positive note.
In the first T20 match against Bath CC, Dylan Budge (87) and Owais Shah (29) resurrected the innings after Scotland “A” were down at 34/4 at one stage. A quickfire cameo of 29 off 19 from Craig Wallace in the final three overs took them to their eventual total of 192/8 in their 20 overs.
Scotland bowlers had a good outing in the park with Ross Lyons (3/19), Christian Robertson (2/28) and James Dickinson (2/35) putting good pressure throughout the Bath CC innings to bowl them out for 148 in the 19th over to win the match by 44 runs.
In the 2nd match played on 21st Apr 2018, Scotland “A” took on Gloucestershire 2nd’s. Scotland put up a mammoth total of 233/5 from their 20 overs with Michael Leask scoring a century with 111 runs. Dylan Budge continued from where he left off against Bath CC and scored another half-century, making 55 runs in the process.
James Dickinson (3/25), Michel Rao (2/17) and Adrian Neill (2/33) bowled well in tandem to bowl out Gloucester 2nd’s for 190 in the 18th over to win the match by 43 runs.
The next two days saw Scotland “A” take on both Bath CC and Gloucestershire 2nd’s in 50-overs matches. In the first 50-overs match against Bath CC, centuries from Michael English and Dylan Budge (doesn’t seem to stop us from mentioning him throughout this article) took Scotland to a huge score of 374 before getting bowled out.
Scotland bowlers then bowled out Bath CC for 217 with Mitchel Rao picking up 4 wickets with his spin bowling as Scotland “A” registered a 157 runs victory over their host’s.
Scotland bowlers were at the receiving end in their second 50-overs match on 23rd Apr against Gloucestershire 2nd’s. Gloucs first XI players made 387/7 in their 50 overs with hefty contributions from Will Tavare (94), Craig Miles (80 n.o), Ian Cockbain (68) and Miles Hammond (38). Adrian Neill picked up two wickets while five others picked up a wicket apiece among Rao, Leask, Ruthven, Sabri & Lyons.
Scotland “A” batters got starts but could not convert them into bigger scores as they got bowled out for 179 runs and thus, losing the match by a big margin of 198 runs. Owais Shah (33), Craig Wallace (28), Michael English (26) & Michael Leask (35) will look upon their knocks and will feel disappointed for not carrying on for a longer period of time to get closer to the daunting target.
In all, a good tour for the youngsters and fringe players for Scotland with much appreciation for Bath CC and Gloucestershire Cricket Club for arranging the fixtures.
