Life has gone full circle for Calum MacLeod during his winter abroad.

The talented Scottish cricketer first served notice of his potential to a wider audience at the Under-19 World Cup in Sri Lanka in 2006 and recently become the latest player to receive a full-time contract from Cricket Scotland, as the prelude to parading his skills again in helping his compatriots gain a notable victory over the Sri Lankan A brigade in Colombo.

In between, there has been plenty of soul-searching and vexatious obstacles to transcend, but, at just 23, MacLeod has the best part of his career ahead of him and he told CricketEurope on Monday that he hopes it will be as an all-rounder in the future.

However, the Uddingston star was honest enough to acknowledge that he has struggled to regain his form with the ball, ever since he was reported with a suspect bowling action to the ICC, during a match at Mannofield in Aberdeen in 2009.

His then-county employees at Warwickshire offered assistance, in the guise of South African pace legend, Allan Donald, but despite the remedial work reaping dividends to the extent that MacLeod was subsequently cleared to bowl again, he has recently concentrated more on his batting than anything else.

It is not that he doesn't want to be part of his country's attack, but the fact is that he didn't send down a single delivery during Scotland's Intercontinental Cup victory over the United Arab Emirates in Sharjah. And that clearly concerned him.

"I wasn't required to bowl, and the guys who did so got the job done [with the Scots eventually recording a seven-wicket victory], which was the main thing, but if I am being honest, it has been hugely frustrating what has happened with my bowling, and the fact is that I want to be contributing in every area and that isn't happening at the moment," said MacLeod, who made his ODI debut as a teenager in 2008 and dealt impressively with the twin threat of Andrew Flintoff and Tim Bresnan.

"On the positive side, it has given me the opportunity to concentrate on and improve my batting, but it is still frustrating that I am not bowling as I know I can bowl, because I am obviously keen to make an impact in as many different areas as I can. But the bottom line is that I have to keep working and prove to the coach and captain [Pete Steindl and Gordon Drummond] that I deserve the chance to bowl at international level. I can't just go out and expect to do it, and especially not when there is so much competition for places in the current Scotland squad."

This is a recurring theme with the present Caledonian ensemble; the absence of prima donnas or look-at-me swagger merchants in the ranks. In the past 10 days, Drummond's personnel have participated in a number of closely-fought fixtures, and the Associate tourists achieved a commendable victory over strong Sri Lankan opposition – "They had six or seven guys who had represented the Test side, so it was a decent result," said MacLeod – but they are fully aware that the really significant action commences this week when they tackle the UAE twice, prior to launching their campaign in the World T20 qualifying tournament in Dubai.

It will help, as MacLeod observed, that Kyle Coetzer and Josh Davey have now hooked up with the Scots [from the Bangladesh Premier League and Middlesex respectively], but there is little margin for error in the next three weeks of frenetic activity and one suspects that the Scots will be happier when they are out in the middle than talking about hypothetical mights and maybes.

"We know the UAE are a dangerous team, with some big hitters in their line-up, and they will be keen to build on the success they enjoyed against Afghanistan, so we have to be ready and our time in Sri Lanka was beneficial in that regard, because the wickets were slow, low, and spun quite a lot, and we expect them to be similar in the UAE games," said MacLeod.

"Maj [id Haq] and Preston did an excellent job for us, and they will be very important in all the up-and-coming matches, but the seamers did well too, and, if anything, it was the batters who let them down in a couple of cases.

"But, none the less, to defeat Sri Lanka's A side once and run them pretty close when we met them again was a positive state of affairs and I definitely think that we are seeing the value of Cricket Scotland placing more and more guys on contracts and allowing us to focus on cricket all year round. I would argue that we are getting closer to beating a full Test team but, with T20 being a great leveller, who knows what will happen in the next few weeks?

"You don't want to curse yourself, but everybody has been chipping in with runs and wickets and vital catches, and we are all excited about the T20 qualifier, even though it is going to be an intense schedule and involve a lot of cricket in a short time. But I think we are in a good place; we are learning how to win tight matches, and the trip to Sri Lanka was a plus in terms of helping us prepare for the challenges ahead. Nobody is taking anything for granted and we all realise it is results which count. But there has not been a wasted moment on this tour and we can't wait for the next challenge."

MacLeod has tasted both triumph and tristesse on his Scotland assignments and can anticipate plenty more fluctuating fortunes for the next decade if he continues to develop his batting skills and fine-tune his technique to the contrasting demands of four-day and T20 cricket. But it surely won't only be Scots who will be delighted if he can re-discover his menace with the ball and return to the attack sooner rather than later.