Published: Jan 14, 2017, 01:30 PM (IST)
Edited: Jan 13, 2017, 05:40 PM (IST)
Hong Kong take on Scotland in the first ever edition of the Desert T20 Group B match, which will be played at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium, Abu Dhabi on Saturday. In the second match, Afghanistan will clash against Ireland at the same venue in a Group A contest. The live telecast of the match will be available on Sky Sports and the live streaming is available on skysports.com. Babar Hayat will lead Hong Kong in this tournament, while Scotland will be led by Kyle Coetzer, who takes over the reins after Preston Mommsen recently retired from international cricket. Hayat set the world on fire when he scored a magnificent 122 against Oman in the Asia Cup qualifying round in 2016. He however could not prevent his side from losing the game by five runs.
The Desert T20 will have a total of eight associate nations participating in it. This will be a seven-day competition, which will have a Round Robin stage, followed by knockouts. Papua New Guinea were invited to participate in the tournament as well. After they declined, Namibia, who do not have a T20 International (T20I) status yet, will fill in for them. As a result, UAE, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Ireland, Namibia, Netherlands, Oman and Scotland are the teams participating in the tournament.
The teams will be divided into groups A and B. After the first round, four teams will qualify for the semi-final, scheduled to be played January 20. The final of the tournament too will be played later that evening. All the three matches on that day will be played at the Dubai International Stadium.
