Scotland beat Ireland U19s in final World Cup match

The Scottish U19 cricket team have completed their 2012 ICC World Cup campaign with a comfortable five wicket win over their Irish counterparts in Brisbane, Australia, in the 11th/12th playoff match.

Ireland won the toss and elected to bat first. They lost wickets at regular intervals and had slid to 40 for 4, before the Scotland bowlers took charge to reduce their celtic rivals to 75 for 6.

An excellent innings by Tyrone Kane held the Irish batting together - he compiled an excellent knock of 78 runs from 121 balls. Ireland eventually found themselves being bowled out for 182 in the final over of their allotted 50.

The wickets were shared amongst five Scottish bowlers, with Ruaidhri Smith and Aman Bailwal each taking three wickets. Both Sam Page and Kyle Smith bowled economical spells to keep the Irish batsman in check with Smith, who has impressed throughout the tournament, only conceding 24 runs from his 10 over spell.

In reply, the Scots got off to a solid start thanks to Matthew Cross and Ross MacLean, who put on 47 runs for the first wicket with Cross scoring a run a ball 30. With no real run rate pressure the Scots looked comfortable in their chase. MacLean continued his excellent tournament by top scoring with 47, ably supported by Nick Farrar and Henry Edwards.

After a couple of wickets fell, the Scottish batsmen held their nerve to reach the target with over 8 overs to spare, to complete an emphatic win to end their World Cup experience on a high.

This result means that Scotland finally finished 11th in the 16 team tournament, their best ever finish in an Under 19 World Cup. Although the team will be slightly disappointed they did not manage to finish higher, they competed exceptionally well against the full member countries and a very talented and experienced Afghanistan team.

The team's performance throughout the event has showed that there are a lot of potential future international cricketers in this group. This match will also signal the final time this group of players will play together as an age group side. Over the last three years they have been a very strong and close knit unit, that have consistently performed very well under the leadership of Paddy Saddler. This convincing win over Ireland was a fitting way for their Under 19 journey to end.

While the majority of the squad will now progress through the Scottish Academy and Lions programmes as they strive for full international honours, players such as Main, Farrar, Ruaidhri Smith and Andrew Umeed will still be in this age group for the next World Cup campaign, an encouraging sign for the future of Scottish cricket.

After the tournament Coach Craig Wright added, "We played really well today, our batting and bowling was what we have come to expect from this group of players. It is always good to get a result against Ireland, and we were thankful that it didn't go down to the last ball, unlike the previous two matches in the qualifying campaign.

I think 11th is a creditable position, we are a little disappointed that we didn't manage to capitalise on some of the positions we got ourselves into against Australia and in particular New Zealand. The boys have worked hard for each other and really stuck at it".