following Bangladesh’s boycott<\/a>, the Scots had their moments but ultimately failed to match the quality of their opponents, who were winners in 2012 and 2016. <\/p>\nA fourth-place finish at last summer’s Europe Qualifier had looked to have cost Scotland a place at the 2026 edition, but handed a second chance, they proved they were not out of place on the big stage.<\/p>\n
Chasing 183, the Scots were 37-3 in the sixth over when captain Richie Berrington and Tom Bruce came together in the middle and briefly ignited hopes of an upset. <\/p>\n
The pair added 78 for the fourth wicket, with Berrington leading from the front with 42 from 24 balls but his departure with the score at 115-4 stalled their momentum. <\/p>\n
West Indies then all but sealed the victory as Shepherd took four wickets in the 17th over, including a sensational hat-trick, to finish with 5-20. <\/p>\n
Opting to bowl first, Scotland restricted West Indies to 182\u20115 – a total they would have gladly accepted going into the final overs after coming under pressure from the brutal hitting of Windies duo Hetmyer and Rovman Powell.<\/p>\n
Making their sixth appearance in the tournament, Scotland held their nerve through the powerplay as West Indies crawled to 33-0 before they struck twice in quick succession through Michael Leask and debutant Oliver Davidson.<\/p>\n
Off-spinner Leask made the breakthrough in the ninth over to dismiss Windies skipper Shai Hope before Davidson, the 21-year-old left-armer, accounted for Brandon King, who had settled in well with a 30-ball 35, in the following over.<\/p>\n
West Indies found themselves 66-2 at the halfway stage of their innings but some explosive batting from Hetmyer swung the momentum back in their favour with Powell also joining in with 24 from 14 balls.<\/p>\n
Hetmyer, meanwhile, raced to his half-century in 22 balls and it needed a fantastic catch from Brandon McMullen at wide long-on to send back the batter in the penultimate over after a quickfire 64 from 36 balls.<\/p>\n
But by then, the Windies were well and truly in command, and despite some tidy death bowling from Brad Currie, who finished with figures of 2\u201123, they posted a total that proved out of Scotland’s reach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scotland began their T20 World Cup campaign with a 35-run defeat by two-time champions West Indies at Eden…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-413244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}