DIFFERENT country, different conditions, different opposition, same result. Scotland kept up their winning streak to reach the ICC Twenty20 World Qualifier final in Dublin today. Beating Hong Kong by a much more comfortable margin than their five-wicket win suggests also gives them a measure of revenge for defeat the only other time the two countries met on a cricket field.

In the end, the Asian visitors never managed to get a foothold in the game, partly a testament to the all-round quality shown by the Scots, but also a reflection on their own heroics in midweek during a nerve-wracking win over Afghanistan. After all the emotional highs, lows and highs again of that gutsy display, they couldn’t find the same passion against Scotland and paid the price.

The reward for Scotland is a meeting with the Netherlands in today’s final after the Dutch successfully chased down Ireland’s 128 in yesterday’s second semi-final.

Rob Taylor, man of the match in Scotland’s game, says he expects things to be a lot tougher. “We played them in the group stages and they turned us over,” he said. “We aim to put that one straight and to continue showing the good form we showed in that series.”

Last week’s dramatic finale to the pool stage meant Scotland could relax going into yesterday’s match, knowing they had already qualified for the T20 World finals in India next year. This weekend is all about pressing home their right to be there and maybe cementing that with a trophy as well.

“Getting the trophy would be massive. We have done the first bit in qualifying for the World Cup but to add the trophy would be immense,” said Taylor. “This is another step for us in the long-term plan we have to drive ourselves up the rankings.

“We are pretty strong across all formats but it will be a great experience to go to the World Cup and another chance for us to test ourselves against the best. It will be the second time we have done it in a year [after the 50-over World Cup in February this year]. We showed we have players who can perform on the world stage.

“Overall it was a good performance, we stuck to our plans and restricted them to a low total. It was the first wicket we have come across in this tournament that had a bit more bounce, so we kept it just back of a length and did not really move too far from there.”

What will give them particular heart is that this was arguably their most complete performance of the qualifying tournament, with all parts of the team contributing to the result. Taylor got the man-of-the-match award for his miserly spell of bowling that produced three wickets for only 17 runs but with three bowlers all returning similar figures, what differentiated him was being in the right place to add a brace of catches to his haul.

Ali Evans and Safyaan Sharif also contributed three wickets apiece with Josh Davey wrapping up the Hong Kong innings two balls before their allocation was up. With their batsmen unable to break the Scots bowling shackles, the total of 116 was never likely to be enough and became impossible once Kyle Coetzer had blasted 16 from the first over of the Scotland innings.

In the end, the runs were shared around, with Davey again having the final say as a quick scampered single took his team home with more than seven overs to spare.

“We had a clear goal that we wanted to win this tournament,” said Scotland captain Preston Mommsen. “The first goal was to qualify in first place and we did that, so the pressure was off. We came out and expressed ourselves against a very strong Hong Kong team.

“This team have come a long way and it feels good to beat them. We had clear plans; we wanted to be aggressive and dominate with the ball. The bowlers responded really well and put the balls in the areas we felt they were vulnerable.

“We never let them off the pump. Then it was the perfect way to chase down a small total – get runs early on an