And we’re off!

Good afternoon sports fans and happy World Cup day! That’s right, it’s day 1 of the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in Bangladesh (UAE) and I for one am excited! Not only because there’s 3 weeks of exciting international cricket ahead of us but also because it means the All The Cricket Dailies are back!!

Before we get on to today’s action let’s just have a quick look at how the competition is going to work.

Ten teams are competing in this year’s tournament, split into two groups.

Group A consists of Australia, India, New Zealand, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Group B lines up as Bangladesh, England, Scotland, South Africa and The West Indies.

As you can see the competition is between the major players in world cricket with the only exception being Scotland qualifying for the tournament ahead of Ireland, good luck to our Caledonian sisters!

The top 2 teams from each group will go through to the semi finals and the victors of those games will then face each other in the grand final on Sunday 20th October……..crikey it’s exciting!

Match 1 was between tournament host’s Bangladesh and perennial thistle in English sides, Scotland.

Bangladesh, although still nominally hosting the competition, had to abandon the hope of games being played in the Bengal delta due to the civil unrest currently going on there.

Bangladesh Women are not particularly known for being a strong side in the world game, in fact they haven’t won a T20 World Cup match since 2014, losing their home advantage will have come as a blow to them. They are well drilled, well prepared team though and have a world class player in skipper Nigar Sultana.

Scotland Women have never qualified for a ICC world event before and are very much the underdogs of the competition. Scotland earned their place in this competition however, making it past the likes of Ireland and the Netherlands to win the World Cup qualifying tournament. Scotland also have a pair of disrupters in the Bryce sisters. Sarah Bryce, wicket keeper batter and Kathryn Bryce, batter and skipper are both world class players with plenty of grit! Kathryn was only a couple of days ago named the Professional Cricketers Association player of the year, no small accomplishment.

This game could have gone anywhere, both BNG and SCO will have fancied having a good chance of getting their tournament underway with a win.

Bangladesh batted first at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium and seemed to be making the most of the conditions in the opening overs. Shathi Rani and Sobhana Mostary made 29 and 36 respectively but when wickets did begin to fall they fell pretty hard. BNG skipper and talisman Nigar Sultana fell for a disappointing, run a ball 18 and Fahima Khatun was the only other BNG batter to make double figures. At the end of their 20 overs the team in Bangla green had chalked up 119 for the cost of 7 wickets.

Scotland, needing just a run a ball, in beautiful conditions and with 2 of the most talented association players in the world wearing the thistle on their chest, probably thought they were in for a good chance.

Sarah Bryce, opening the batting after a strong performance with the gloves in the first innings certainly made her intentions known in the Emirate heat, scoring an unbeaten 49 from 52 balls. Unfortunately the rest of the flower of Scotland wilted under a sustained attack, in spinning conditions, of Bangladesh’s much more experienced bowlers.

Captain and kin Kathryn Bryce fell for just 11 while the only others Scot to make it out of the single figures was Ailsa Lister. When 20 overs had been bowled and all the mars bars had been battered, Scotland pulled up 16 runs short on 103 for 7.

There are positives to take for our northern sisters, they are there, they made it to the finals and there are games that could still be won. For Bangladesh, it’s the winning start they will have been desperate for in a, sort of, home World Cup.

So we’re up and running and I won’t pretend I’m not chuffed about it. There was a second game today where Pakistan laid down a very similar drubbing on Sri Lanka that Bangladesh did to Scotland.

I’m going to keep these daily posts short and snappy so I might not feature every game every day but you can read up about all the action on other, less interesting publications.

Tomorrow the action continues in Dubai where South Africa take on West Indies and India face off against New Zealand.

Thank you for joining me for the first of this round of World Cup dailies and I hope you’ll join me again.

All the best,

Nick