SCOTLAND’S swaggering World Cup qualifying campaign in New Zealand, where whirring blades and nerveless temperaments combined to produce the effect of a team that had been collecting trophies since early infancy, was not an illusion, but it did create a temporary haze. There were bound to be one or two reality checks.

The first arrived in Aberdeen on May 9, when England were too good for Scotland with bat and ball. It will be a long wait for the next one, as the team are now in a state of suspended reality until the World Cup reunites them with cricket’s A-listers next February, so the jury is out on whether the team that came of age in New Zealand is capable of causing a stir at the highest level. But it is more difficult now, as much as it remains tempting, to promote the idea of Scotland beating England in Christchurch. Mannofield was Scotland’s 10th completed ODI against a full member on home soil and it was a missed opportunity. That’s 10 and counting.

At least the hosts did themselves full justice in the field. Alastair Cook bestowed Scottish cricket with some lavish praise, easily the most lavish praise bestowed by an England captain since Kevin Pietersen was gracious enough to admit after the teams’ first meeting in 2009 that “Hamilton batted OK”. Cook was taken aback as he marvelled at the home players performing athletic feats on ground so unfavourable that it made his own troops aspire to stay on their feet and not much more.

Praise for fielding should not be seen as patronising, at least not in this case, and nor should it be dismissed as good manners. New Zealand were once a team who knew that it would be years before they could bat and bowl as well as the bigger nations, and targeted fielding as their best and most immediate chance of narrowing the gap. For a while Zimbabwe also benefited from teaching players to throw better than they could bowl.

Scotland used to be a shoddy fielding side, just as they used to be a collection of players incapable of scoring runs quickly under pressure from high-calibre bowling while retaining their wickets. At least one of the old stereotypes has been eradicated.

Cook was not expecting to be dismissed at Mannofield when he unleashed what looked like a flat six down the long-off channel, but Calum MacLeod hurtled into view and pouched the kind of catch that raises the tempo of a routine drill, let alone an ODI. In front of that crowd, and that TV audience, it was terrifically valuable, possibly even more impressive than Rob Taylor’s balletic beauty on the boundary because it broke a partnership that could have turned the contest into a procession.

It would have been naïve to think that Scotland could play the same way against England as they had against Canada, Kenya and the UAE during the winter but it didn’t stop Paul Collingwood observing in late March that if the two national teams he has been associated with could have met at that time, their respective momentum would have made a famous upset seem distinctly possible if not probable.

In the end Scotland lost by 30-odd runs, but that was a misleadingly small margin – even in the midst of Michael Leask’s long hitting it never felt like a close game. And if Scotland didn’t already know that they would have to bowl and bat better than this to shake up the elite, they know it now, and they will be reminded of it on hard Antipodean terrain at the World Cup.

Speaking of the World Cup, it would be dangerous to expect miracles. Memories of Scotland’s annus horribilis are still too fresh (the year in question was 2013), and even though I am convinced that MacLeod and Preston Mommsen are what can be defined loosely as “the real deal”, more players than two will need to start showing they can play a decisive hand.

Every time I have seen Ireland outplay, imitate or inflict humiliation on a full ICC member, it has looked like an 11-man effort. Sure, they had an O’Brien contributing a big score when they beat Pakistan in 2007 and England in 2011, but without a strong tail the heroics of the top scorer would have been for nought. This was especially true when Ireland beat England in Bangalore: they had Alex Cusack at seven and John Mooney at eight, and it had been drilled into those players for a number of years that they were good enough to be batting several places higher but that there would come a day when the team would need somebody of their calibre to come in late and do as good a job in the role finisher as the one O’Brien was doing in the role of kingpin.

Scotland, for all their improvements, are a long way yet from being an 11-man crack unit, and it is too early to predict with any confidence that they will break their World Cup duck this winter, immersed as they are in a group with England, Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. Afghanistan are the only one of that group they have previously beaten in an ODI but the newcomers have won four of six meetings. Australia, New Zealand and Sri Lanka never give weaker opposition much of a sniff, so realistically they will probably get three chances to pull a rabbit out of their hats.

And Peter Moores’ England, unfortunately, have seen and undermined their methods too recently to be at risk of wandering complacently into battle in Christchurch like it’s Stirling Bridge all over again.