Scotland aim for West Indies scalp but World Cup qualifying an unfair fight

“If you’d have offered it to us a couple of months ago, that we’d have a last game to qualify for the World Cup, we’d have probably taken that,” says Kyle Coetzer, looking forward to Scotland’s first ever competitive fixture against West Indies. With victory comes near-certain qualification but this is a game upon which rests not just their hopes of winning a place in next year’s finals, but the short-term future of Scottish cricket.

“We sat down two months ago as a senior group and we spoke about what we wanted to get out of the tournament and how we were going to do it. Our aim was to win the tournament,” Coetzer says. “We’ve got ourselves in a position to get there. It’s all in our hands now. It’s going to be a challenging game but it’s in our hands.”

Sunday’s 25-run defeat to Ireland was Scotland’s first of the competition, though there was also a brilliantly dramatic tie against Zimbabwe in the group stages. They will feel that both of those games could, and perhaps should, have been won, and that their position might have been considerably stronger. “That was a pretty special occasion,” says Coetzer of the game against the hosts. “The place was packed, fans everywhere, it had it all. The atmosphere was pretty electric really. It’s been a special tournament. There’s not many places we’ve been to that have been like this.”

Any number of complaints could be levelled at the concept of a tournament in which not just World Cup places but ODI status have been up for grabs, and in which because of the teams’ varied statuses some games have been classified as official ODIs, and others as humble List A matches. Yet it has produced several thrilling encounters which have been watched by large, engaged crowds.

“The tournament has had everything,” says Coetzer. “There have been some special games, and we’ve met some special people. Everyone’s embraced it and the cricket’s been amazing. Zimbabwe is amazing in itself. They’ve been through some hard times, and that’s evident when you go around, but the country has embraced this competition, the fans have come out in numbers and the atmosphere is as good as any competition I’ve played anywhere in the world. It has been exciting, an amazing tournament to be involved in, something we’ll have memories of for the rest of our lives. But the tournament would still have had everything if more teams could qualify for the World Cup.”

Though the 2019 World Cup will only have one less match than the 2015 event, it will involve four fewer teams. This decision may have seemed sensible to the ICC when they took it, and there will certainly have been compelling financial arguments to be made for it, but the monetary gain has come at a cost. Primary among them is the sense that the interests of smaller nations that have contributed a great deal to recent tournaments – and where the sport, given the right conditions, could continue to flourish – have been betrayed. But there is also a more human cost, which will be paid by the players whose opportunity to play in major tournaments, to challenge and develop themselves and to realise dreams and ambitions, have been sacrificed to allow more money to be squeezed from the game’s most established marketplaces.

“I think everyone here wants more teams involved [in the World Cup], and for all of us to have a fighting chance,” says Coetzer. “It just seems ludicrous in my eyes and everyone else’s eyes out here. The quality of the cricket has been second to none. The level of competition, the level of the players, the skill, the improvement even since the last qualifiers, not just in our team but all the other associate members. And it just seems ludicrous that they’re going to minimise cricket rather than grow it.

“The impact on us will be huge, really. First of all we’ve got, currently, three fixtures for the whole of next summer: a game against England and two Twenty20s against Pakistan. That’s it at the moment. When you’ve got a very quiet schedule, what are you training for? What are you preparing for? As a team we need something to be targeting, and for us that’s the World Cup. Obviously the England and Pakistan games will be special, but they’ll be done in three days. World Cups are where memories are made and what people want to play in. It’s the main event, really. I think it’ll be pretty hard if we don’t qualify. It’ll hit the guys hard, hit the supporters hard, and everyone who’s put so much work into getting us where we are. We’ve shown in this tournament that we are a thriving, capable squad of players who want to go places. And how are we going to do that if there’s no World Cup, no cricket?”

West Indies are overwhelming favourites to win their final match and seal qualification. They sailed through their group with a 100% record and across the tournament have been beaten only by Afghanistan – a team Scotland themselves beat by seven wickets. “We’ve got to believe that we can beat the West Indies,” Coetzer says. “They had a cracking game on Monday [against Zimbabwe] which I’m sure will have taken a bit out of them. They have scraped through on a couple of occasions. There’s no reason at all that there can’t be an opposition to take them down. We’ve shown through the tournament what we’re capable of but we haven’t played our best game of cricket yet. The vibe among the squad is brilliant. We have to believe we can win it, otherwise we might as well not turn up.”

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