Scotland excited by chance of historic meeting with 'Auld Enemy'

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England and Scotland have never played each other before in a recognised Women’s T20 International, and so Sunday’s Group B meeting is an important first on the biggest stage.

For Scotland, it is a terrific opportunity to have a crack at one of the best teams in the world, and at very least it will be a valuable learning experience for a squad making their first-ever appearance at an ICC World Cup.

“We're very excited about it,” Scotland bowler Abtaha Maqsood said. “Obviously we’ve never played England, we've not played a lot of these teams, so it's just a really good opportunity to be able to play another team that's ranked quite a bit above us and another full member nation. It's just such a great learning experience for all of us.

“Obviously playing England is just an amazing occasion for all Scottish people, so yeah I'm sure everyone will be eating it up back home as well.”

Scotland’s debut tournament will come to an end with Sunday’s match, with the team having lost their three previous group games to Bangladesh, South Africa and West Indies.

And while the players will leave with some small regrets, Maqsood said the opportunity for a largely non-professional squad to see how the elite athletes go about the sport has been hugely beneficial.

“It’s our very first World Cup, it was always going to be difficult to come in and get our first win straight away. We were pretty close against Bangladesh and that was a pretty heartbreaking one, but I think we have learned a lot.

“That is like our main focus as well – to definitely learn from the experience as much as we can.

“Just playing higher ranked teams and seeing how they go about their business and just watching them train, little things like that is just really important for us, especially because a lot of us aren't professional cricketers. So yeah, it's just been a really good learning experience just to watch everyone, how they go about their business.”

England will be looking to go about their business in an attacking manner, knowing that net run rate could yet be an important factor to qualify from Group B.

But captain Heather Knight is keeping that sort of conversation behind closed doors, and was keen to talk about the Scotland players, and how pleasing it is to see them competing on the world stage.

“It's really cool that they're here,” Knight said. “A lot of their players play in our domestic English league, so we know some of them quite well.

“Look, they've got nothing to lose. They're going to come out hard against us, they're going to try and take us down and we're totally prepared for that.

“We just want to play our best cricket and obviously try and manage the game situations that we face as best we can and yeah hopefully we can come out on top.”

England will have one group game remaining after this meeting against Scotland, with Tuesday’s fixture against West Indies set to bring the curtain down on the tournament’s group stage.

All matches at the ICC Women's T20 World Cup 2024 will be held in the two host cities of Dubai and Sharjah.

Fans can purchase tickets online or directly at the stadiums, for more information on where to buy click here.