It is an exciting time for local cricketers Orla Montgomery and Niamh Muir who are bound for a World Cup after the Scotland U19 Women's Squad for the January tournament in South Africa was announced on Monday.

Both play for the Dumfries and Galloway Women's team in the Scottish Women's Premier League and both were in the successful Scotland U19 side that qualified convincingly for the ICC World Cup in the Netherlands in August. They have learnt and developed their cricket talents locally through Galloway, St Michael's and Dumfries Cricket Clubs and Cricket Scotland's pathway programmes.

The tournament is made up of 16 teams split into groups of four, and will be held between 7th January and 24th January next year. Scotland feature in a group alongside India, South Africa, and the UAE. The top three teams from each group will then progress to the Super Six round, which will consist of two groups of six.

The Scotland Womens U19 Head Coach, Peter Ross, said “It is a hugely exciting time ahead for this U19 Scotland Women squad as they prepare for the inaugural U19 Women’s T20 World Cup."

“They will have the privilege of being the first Scottish female cricket team to ever participate in a World Cup. It was evident during their qualifying campaign that this is an extremely talented group who have the ability to deliver high quality performances."

The squad will be training at La Manga in Spain before Christmas and then will fly out to South Africa in early January to play warm-up matches. Scotland will play UAE first on the 14th January in the group games followed by South Africa and then India. The latter two teams in particular will be formidable opponents at this level but will provide "an amazing opportunity for our U19s Women to participate in the first-ever Women’s U19s World Cup".

Further details can be found here

ICC Article: Scotland confident of strong showing at U19 Women's T20 World Cup

Cricket Scotland: Scotland Women’s U19 ICC T20 World Cup squad announced