Scotland end T20 series with comfortable win over Nepal

But Matthew Cross and and Michael Leask steadied the ship and shared an unbeaten partnership of 48 to see Scotland close to 200 runs.

Nepal’s chase started in erratic fashion after Kushal Bhurtel’s ramp shot from McMullen’s delivery in the first over was smartly taken by Finlay McCreath on the boundary.

By the time captain Rohit Paudel chipped one from Mark Watt to Chris Greaves, the tourists were 82-5 in the 11th over.

Dipendra Singh Airee led the fightback with an effective 34 from 33 balls, but up stepped Greaves to bowl him, and then Lamichhane in consecutive deliveries to leave Nepal 117-8 and their hopes of victory looking bleak.

Greaves grabbed his third of the day when he had Rijan Dhakal caught, and despite Rupesh Singh lasting until the end with a haul of 43, Nepal’s resistance ended when Lalit Rajbanshi was run out.

Scotland will now look to next month’s qualifiers in the Netherlands when they face the Dutch, Italy, Jersey and Guernsey for a place at the World Cup in India and Sri Lanka next year.

They ended with two wins and two losses in the three-way series, as did Nepal and the Netherlands.

“The key takeaways for me is the squad is growing now,” head coach Watson told BBC Scotland.

“We have 15 guys here who played with their heart on their sleeve for Scotland. They’re developing nicely but it’s a young group.

“We’ve had some really tough and close games which bodes well for the future.”