Visitors confident of successful PNG tour

Sports

By HUXLEY LOVAI
THE visiting Scotland national cricket team are in high spirits and feel confident of a successful tour of Papua New Guinea.
With their opening four-day Intercontinental Cup match drawn ,the Scots have been upbeat about their tour in general.
They prepared well, acclimatising to the tropical conditions, with a lead-up tour of the Gold Coast, Australia.
Scotland captain Kyle Coetzer said the side had an invaluable hitout against the Auckland Aces in a series of warm up matches.
“The prep we have done, very happy with how it has gone, getting used to the conditions and temperatures and things like that,” Coetzer said.
“We played two games against Auckland in our warm-up tour, we managed to put in encouraging performances with both bat and ball.
“It was a good challenge against a new emerging Auckland side who despite not having their full strength team, fielded a competitive side who pushed us at times.
“But we felt that we came off fairly strongly, and that’s what the tour was for. To be pushed and put out of our comfort zones.”
Head coach of the Scotland national cricket team Grant Bradburn spoke of the limited international schedule allocated to associate member nations of the International Cricket Council, PNG and Scotland among them.
“As international teams Scotland and PNG deserve to play more cricket, associate nations just don’t play enough cricket, it’s crazy,” Bradburn said.
“We have two very good sides here, and for Scotland this year we will play 30 days of international cricket, that’s not even half of what an average full member would play.
“So it just means that we are developing slower, and we just have to be more creative with how we provide opportunities for our guys to develop.
“But our team’s attitude is impeccable, they want to learn and play. There are no easy beats in associate cricket, were ever you are ranked every game has massive consequence. So for these guys every game is off great importance.”