T20 World Cup: Scotland’s Brad Curry talks about his football fantasy ego

Corey is the brother of Scott, the Scottish footballer who was called up to the England national team last year.

They both qualified for Scotland via their Scottish father, having grown up on the south coast of England. Left-armer Brad studied sports psychology at Bournemouth University.

A lifelong fan, Brad was present for the Cherries’ 3-2 win over Liverpool at the Vitality Stadium – when Amine Adly scored a 95th-minute winner against the Premier League champions – on the day he received a call from manager Owen Dawkins to tell him he had been included in Scotland’s World Cup squad.

“I told my colleague, ‘I know exactly what this is, but I can’t pick it up because I won’t get any signal,’” Corey says.

“I got on the phone later and Dux said: ‘That was a good result, wasn’t it?’”

I said: Yes, and I hope you won’t spoil my mood now.

After losing out to the Netherlands and Italy in the qualifiers, Scotland secured a place in the World Cup when Bangladesh chose to boycott the tournament.

The previous weeks had been uncertain, full of claims and counter-claims about whether the Tigers would participate and what it would mean for Scotland if they did not. Even the players were not immune.

“I was training at Sussex Boarding School and I was asking all the authorities and coaching staff,” says Corey.

“It was crazy people saying we were going. I just thought: ‘You know more than me and I’m one of the players in the official Scotland group chat’.”

As a county professional in Sussex, Corey was lucky to have been training over the winter.

It is known that the workload of bowlers is very important to manage, however, Scotland’s focus has shifted from ICC World Cup League 2 at the end of March to the T20 World Cup in India at the beginning of February.

“I don’t know what date it was officially announced, but the next two days were the weekend and I didn’t do anything,” he says.

“My girlfriend’s family was like, ‘Shouldn’t you be training? Shouldn’t you be doing something?’

“You can’t cram. You’ll just get hurt. It’s not like a school test where you can cram to review.”