Unheralded Scot stars in shock T20 World Cup win

Bangladesh’s T20 World Cup campaign has gotten off to a horror start after being stunned by a spirited Scotland outfit in its tournament opener.

The Scots were staring down the barrel of a heavy defeat when they found themselves at 6-53 batting first before a match-winning all-round assault from Chris Greaves.

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Greaves lifted his side to a competitive score of 7-140 off their allotted 20 overs with a blistering 45 off just 28 deliveries before finishing with figures of 2-19 off three overs with the ball as Scotland held on for a six-run win.

The Player of the Match-winning performance capped an incredible rise for the 31-year-old who was playing in just his second international match for Scotland, and had struggled to keep his cricketing dream alive during the pandemic.

“I am really proud of Greaves,” Scotland captain Kyle Coetzer said. “He really sacrificed a lot. He was delivering parcels for Amazon not too long ago, and now is getting Player of the Match against Bangladesh.

“I am not sure if he will appreciate me saying this. Seeing the performance from Mark Watt and Chris Greaves with the bat today, they are lesser-known people who had to make many sacrifices to get to where they are today.

“Greaves isn’t a contracted player in Scotland. He was on the fringes. He put his hand up, worked extremely hard and put himself in the picture. Going back a month, he wouldn’t even start in one of these games. Look at what he has done. It is just proof in the pudding that there are some quality players around Associate cricket. They just need the platform to show it.”

Following his side’s shock loss, Bangladesh skipper Mahmudullah expressed frustration with his side’s lack of aggressiveness in the run chase.

“I am very much frustrated,” Mahmudullah said. “Our batting is a concern. We have to bat better. We have to play aggressive cricket, regardless of the situation. We have a deep batting line-up, with Mohammad Saifuddin at No. 9. We may need to think over some changes tomorrow.

“We didn’t deliberately bat slowly. We couldn’t hit those boundaries. We have to bat better next time. A lot of things will come up since we lost the game. I think we didn’t play well today, but we are a good T20 team. We have the capability. When we play our best cricket, we can win games.

“I think the bowlers were on the right track. We had them at 53 for 6, but then they had a good partnership. They played better cricket than us. We were just not good enough tonight.

“Mahedi [Hasan] and Shakib bowled very well. Maybe we could have bowled better in the death overs, but our batting was really bad. If we don’t take stock of it, it won’t get us anything good.”

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