England leg-spinner Sarah Glenn believes her side need to remain wary of Scotland in their Women’s T20 World Cup group match on Sunday despite their opponents having already been eliminated from the tournament.
Debutants Scotland have lost all three of their games in Group B, to Bangladesh, the West Indies and South Africa, meaning they already know they cannot progress to the semi-finals ahead of their final match against England in Sharjah, live on Sky Sports Cricket at 11am on Sunday.
England, meanwhile, are big favourites to progress with two wins from two so far as one of only two unbeaten sides in the tournament alongside holders Australia.
“With the games they have, they’ll want to put a stamp on it,” said Glenn of Scotland in an interview with Sky Sports News ahead of the match.
“Obviously, it’s their first World Cup and they’ve got a class set of players as well, and they’ll want to play really good cricket and we’ve just got to be ready to adapt to combat that.
“They’ll come at us quite hard, so we just need to hopefully just be ready and enjoy playing it.”
Matches between England and Scotland in any sport invariably attract attention and Glenn added: “I guess it would be natural to be (billed as) the battle of us two, but Scotland are probably similar to us in that they will just want to be focusing on themselves and how they play their cricket.
“Hopefully, it will be a good competitive game and it’ll be an entertaining game of cricket.”
Can England maintain momentum from perfect start in World Cup pursuit?
England’s 100 per cent start to the tournament has put them in the driving seat in Group B, with the final matches against Scotland this weekend and then the West Indies in Dubai on Tuesday to come to book their place in the October 17-18 semi-finals.
“It’s obviously how we wanted to start,” said Glenn, who has taken a wicket in each of England’s two wins so far.
“We have just been taking each game as it comes and to get two wins on the board is really special, especially in the first game where the conditions were quite tough and we were trying to adapt to them.
“But in the second game I think we really showed our skill and our physicality as well, running really hard between the wickets and things like that. So it’s been a good start from us and hopefully we can take the momentum forward.”
Reigning champions Australia, the winners of six of the eight Women’s T20 World Cups, having made an ominously unbeaten start too, and Glenn acknowledged: “They have been a class side for a long time.
“The way they play their cricket is inspiring to us in terms of the standards we want to keep striving towards, and as a team I think we have been building into that really nicely.
“We have shown our skills the last summer, we had an unbeaten English home summer, so we have been ticking along really nicely, but there are plenty of other class sides in this tournament as well.
“Obviously, Australia are really up there as well and are going to be a really tough team to beat.”
England were the inaugural winners of the tournament back in 2009 when they beat New Zealand by six wickets in the final at Lord’s, but a follow-up victory has proved elusive amid Australia’s dominance, with three runner-up finishes (2012, 2014, 2018) and three defeats in semi-finals (2016, 2020, 2023).
So could Heather Knight’s side make the difference this time around?
“We have got a really nicely balanced side, and a lovely mixture between experienced players and really young, talented players,” said Glenn.
“Obviously our minds could easily drift to ‘oh, that would be so nice to win a World Cup’ and things like that, that is natural, that is going to happen – our minds are going to wander.
“But for us we’ve just been focusing on our own focus and, whether it’s looking back at the past or in the future, we’ve just focused on being really present, taking each game as it goes and how we want to play our cricket, which is hopefully to inspire and entertain people.”
Watch every match of the 2024 Women’s T20 World Cup live on Sky Sportsconcluding with the final in Dubai on Sunday October 20. You can also stream the tournament and more with NOW
