At last the chance arrived to play cricket and Kyle Coetzer, Scotland’s senior batsman, unleashed the frustrations of the previous week cooped up in Ayr with a blistering assault on the United Arab Emirates attack which set up a comfortable 98 run win for his team.

The 32-year-old Aberdonian was, along with skipper Preston Mommsen, one of two centurions and one of three in the Scotland squad - Richie Berrington was the third of them - to reach a thousand One Day International runs in the course of a dominant performance.

That this World Cricket League match went ahead was cause for celebration in itself, though, after last week’s Intercontinental Cup four day match had become the latest contributor to a miserable, weather blighted campaign for the Scots in what they must now accept is a failed bid to earn a taste of Test cricket, through little fault of their own, via that competition.

By contrast this 50 overs-a-side tournament carries less in the way of direct reward since Scotland need only to finish in the eight team league’s top four in order to get into the 2018 World Cup qualifiers. However they went into the first of these two meetings with the UAE in fourth place and needing maximum points from them to give themselves a cushion.

From the outset they set about that task purposefully, Coetzer setting the tone by smiting a couple of boundaries in the day’s opening over and while his opening partner Craig Wallace should have been out off the first ball he faced, that he had swept aggressively at it to be dropped on the long leg boundary spoke to the Scottish mindset.

He was to nick the first of his two boundaries between wicket-keeper and slip, survived a confident early LBW shout and was only to score 16, but he got them at a run a ball and his eager running and readiness to let his free-flowing partner have the strike was a far from insignificant contribution to the day’s proceedings, Coetzer racing to his half century off 37 balls before the pair were separated when Wallace chipped a catch to mid-wicket.

That happened at the end of the initial power-play, those opening 10 overs yielding 79 runs and Coetzer then moved into consolidation mode, at one stage registering 26 consecutive singles in working his way towards his century and by the time he got there he was accompanied by his captain who, in more evenly paced fashion, would follow suit, only the second time two Scottish batsmen have done so in a One Day International.

Their 112 run partnership ended when Coetzer holed out at long on for 127 in the 39th over, Mommsen finishing on 111 not out, having steered his side to an imposing tally of 327 – 5.

That offered the captain licence which he used as, learning from how the opposition spinners had managed to stem the flow of Scottish runs in the middle overs of their innings, he experimented by inviting Somerset all-rounder Michael Leask to open the bowling with his off-breaks.

The UAE having dropped a couple of chances, most notably when Muhammad Naveed spilled a simple looking opportunity after Coetzer, then on 79, top edged an attempted slog sweep to him at short fine leg, Scotland’s fielding was to make the difference as nine catches - the best a flying effort by Richie Berrington at point to remove the UAE’s top scorer Rohan Mustafa – and a sharp run out by Con de Lange accounted for their opponents.

As well as taking three of those catches de Lange took two for 35 in his 10 overs which was probably the best effort among the Scotland bowlers on a day when slow bowlers exerted more control, albeit Ali Evans picked up four wickets for 41 in the eight he bowled before Leask finished what he started by finding the top edge of Saqlain Haider’s bat.