• Doug Watson named temporary men’s team head coach.
• He will begin working with Cricket Scotland on April 8.
• He will be in charge of Scotland’s efforts to qualify for World Cup.

Doug Watson was named the temporary men’s team head coach by Cricket Scotland on Monday. Watson will begin working with Cricket Scotland on April 8 and has a contract that lasts until July 31. Currently, Watson is the head coach of male performance with the Auckland Aces.

He will be in charge of Scotland’s efforts to qualify for the 2023 Cricket World Cup in Zimbabwe and the 2024 World T20 Europe Qualifiers, which are taking place in Edinburgh this July.

Watson’s hiring comes after Shane Burger, Scotland’s head coach since 2019, stepped down earlier this year to take over as batting coach of English county side Somerset. In Nepal, on his final project with Scotland, he won the Cricket World Cup League 2 championship.

“Firstly, I’m really thankful to everyone at Auckland Cricket for allowing me to pursue this opportunity with Cricket Scotland. It’s a wonderful chance for me to coach another country, and Scotland’s Men have been doing really well over the last four years.”

“I’m looking forward to carrying on and developing the great work that Shane Burger has put in here. I know Shane well, he’s worked really hard to help get Scotland to where they are, and it was great to see them lift the CWCL2 trophy last week in Nepal.”

“I know it’s obviously a short period of time that I’ll be in charge, but there are two massive tournaments coming up which will be tough for us, especially the Cricket World Cup Qualifier in Zimbabwe in June. But it’s also an exciting time as well — I’m looking forward to it and it’s going to be fun,” said Watson in a statement.

“I’m delighted to welcome Doug to Cricket Scotland. We conducted a very thorough hiring process and looked at around forty-five candidates. We wanted someone who’d been previously involved with coaching smaller teams, with Associate Cricket, with experience of World Cup Qualifying competitions, with knowledge of top-level cricket, and with experience of Zimbabwe.”

“Doug really fit the bill in all those cases. We had some of the Men’s players on the interview panel, which I think was really important for them to be involved with so that they had some buy-in as to who will be coaching them for the next four months.”

“The Auckland Aces have a very good coaching system, and a testament to that is Doug’s recent involvement with the Black Caps in the series against England. We look forward to him starting work with us in April,” said Toby Bailey, Cricket Scotland’s interim head of performance.

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