After Netherlands, Scotland qualified for their fourth World T20 appearance. The other fixture saw Oman winning a close match against Hong Kong.
UAE v Scotland
UAE got another chance to book their seat in the World T20 next year but they again faltered. Despite an indifferent performance in the group stage which placed them at the fourth spot, Scotland showed their experience in the crunch match as all of their batsmen shone. Captain Kyle Coetzer and George Munsey added 87 runs in the opening partnership before Coetzer was dismissed for 34. Munsey went on to score a brilliant 43 –ball 65 with two fours and five sixes. Later Richie Barrington’s 18-ball 48 and Calum MacLeod’s 12-ball 25 took them to a very strong 198/6 in their 20 overs.
Chasing a target at a required rate touching 10 is not easy and UAE did not have a great start as they lost their openers in first three overs. There were contributions from Rameez Shahzad who scored 34 and Muhannad Usman made 20 but there were not much support from lower order and UAE were all out for 108 in the 19th over. For Scotland, Safyaan Sharif and Mark Watt both finished with 3/21 each.
Scotland 198 for 6 (Munsey 65, Berrington 48, Mustafa 2-38) beat United Arab Emirates 108 (Shahzad 34, Sharif 3-21, Watt 3-21) by 90 runs
Hong Kong v Oman
In the last qualifier, Oman and Hong Kong played a close match which ended with Oman winning by 12 runs. Batting first Oman posted 134/7, thanks to an outstanding innings from the opener Jatinder Singh. They were in deep trouble when they lost their 6th wicket for 42 runs in the 9th over. However, Jatinder held one end up and first added 42 runs with Aamir Kaleem who scored 17 and then 50 runs in 3.1 overs with Naseem Khushi. Naseem scored an explosive 26 runs of 9 balls with a couple of fours and sixes. Jatinder remained not out on 67 off 50 balls.
Hong Kong also had a terrible start as Bilal Khan again picked up early wickets and made them struggle with just 18/ 5 on board in the 4th over. Scot McKechnie and Haroon Arshad added 52 runs in the sixth wicket but once Haroon was dismissed by Khawar Ali, the chase was derailed and they lost regular wickets to finish with 122/9. McKechnie scored 44 and Bilal Khan took four wickets conceding only 23 runs to take Oman to back-to-back World T20.
Oman 134 for 7 (Jatinder 67*) beat Hong Kong 122 for 9 (McKechnie 44, Bilal 4-23) by 12 runs