New Zealand has a dangerous line-up, but they are human beings: Scotland captain Preston Mommsen

Preston Mommsen

Scotland captain Preston Mommsen believes that his side can get through to the next round and has backed his team’s batting to drive them through to the quarters in the ICC Cricket World Cup.

The Scots qualified for the World Cup courtesy of seven consecutive wins after losing their opening qualifying match to Hong Kong last year. Captain Mommsen was the second highest scorer in the qualifiers, with a tally of 520. He also hit 139 runs in the final win over UAE to clinch qualification.

He said, “Matthew Machan a very dynamic, short, punchy sort of player, David Warner-style player, has the ability to take the game away from the opposition. Calum Macleod has had a brilliant past 12 months as well, and Kyle Coetzer is also looking good with his 96 against West Indies. We'll be looking to them to score heavily and feature in the top 10, top 20 run-scorers in this group stage. Hopefully that sets us up to get through to the next round.”

“Their is belief in the side”

Mommsen said that his side has belief in itself after qualifying for the World Cup and that they can deal with pressure now.

“I think the belief in the side probably changed 12 months ago when we qualified for this tournament. We lost the first game and we knew our backs were against it. We had to win every game in that tournament to qualify, and pretty much for a lot of the guys, their careers were on the line. From that moment we really learnt how to deal with pressure and guys stood up when they needed to stand up,” Mommsen said.

“But looking back at the last two warm-up games against Ireland and West Indies – that's also done a huge amount for this team.”

Scotland are grouped in Pool A alongside Sri Lanka, England, Afghanistan and Bangladesh apart from hosts Australia and New Zealand, who are their opposition in their first match at the tournament.

“New Zealand players are human beings”

Last year, Scotland played against a New Zealand XI which featured Brendon McCullum, Daniel Vettori, Luke Ronchi, Mitchell McClenaghan and Cory Anderson, and lost by only 1 run. Mommsen said that Scotland would take significant confidence from their performance in that match.

“We watched a video this morning of that game, and we took a huge amount from it,” Mommsen said. “We took them very close, and really we should have won that game. A lot of the guys playing tomorrow played in that game, so we've got to call upon that. Hopefully we can take the game deep.”

“New Zealand's is a dangerous lineup from 1 to 11, but at the same time they're still human beings. They still can nick the ball and get caught at slip. We have to put the balls in the right areas and make sure we're able to contain them. We can draw on the recent experience of coming up against West Indies – a very dangerous batting lineup with Chris Gayle, Darren Sammy, Andre Russell towards the deaths,” he concluded.