Scotland cruise past Netherlands to keep title hopes alive
The Netherlands will take on Scotland in a winner-takes-all final fixture on 20 June after the visitors made short work of their target of 161 to win by seven wickets with 14 balls remaining.
The Dutch got off to a flier after winning the toss and electing to bat, with openers Tobias Visee (25 from 15 balls) and Max O'Dowd (31 from 25) each reeling off a succession of boundaries in the Powerplay.
The Scots stemmed the flows of runs somewhat after left-arm spinner Mark Watt – who was the most parsimonious of their bowlers, returning figures of 1/18 from his four overs – clean bowled Visee and Richie Berrington had O'Dowd caught at short-leg by Michael Leask, but the experienced Wesley Barresi kept the scoreboard moving, hitting 53 from 51 balls to register his fourth T20I half-century.
Alasdair Evans accounted for Ben Cooper (22 from 19) and Sikander Zulfiqar to further halt the Netherlands' progress in the final overs and Scotland would have been reasonably happy to restrict their opponents to 160/6 given the earlier fireworks.
Scotland's openers started with conviction, George Munsey (46 from 29) and captain Kyle Coetzer (42 from 20) playing expansively to bring up the 50 in just 3.3 overs.
Coetzer eventually skied one to cover off the bowling of Fred Klaassen and Munsey fell four short of what would have been a second half-century in the format, holing out to deep square-leg off Barresi. It was Munsey's third significant contribution of the tournament, his scores so far reading 41, 46, 46.
Calum MacLeod fell to skipper Pieter Seelaar for 14 but there were no further alarms, as Berrington (49* from 32) guided his team home with plenty to spare.
The victory leaves Scotland on three points, behind second-placed Ireland on net run rate and one point behind the Netherlands. If they can inflict another defeat on the hosts in the final fixture of the competition, the trophy will be theirs.