KIERON Achara can’t wait to try his Team Scotland basketball kit out for size. No, I am serious, the fitting stage really will be rather important. Not only is the Glasgow Rocks captain and forward – selected yesterday to skipper Scotland at the showpiece for this Spring in the Gold Coast – savouring his first ever Commonwealth showpiece after missing out in Melbourne in 2006 with a shoulder problem then seeing the sport dropped from the roster for the 2010 and 2014 games, he is still ever so slightly traumatised from having to turn out for Team GB at the London Olympics in 2012 in Adidas garments which were somewhat ill fitting for his giant 6ft 10in frame.

“I kept asking ‘can I see it?’ ‘Does it fit?’” said Achara. “They said it would be fine but I just knew that I would have to wear three quarter lengths and a wee belly top. This time there is the kilt as well. So fingers crossed.”

Scotland have had to jump through hoops as well as shoot them to convince the world that they deserve to have a male basketball team in the Gold Coast, but they are reaping the benefits of a joint decision between Basketball Scotland and Glasgow Rocks taken a few years out to populate Scotland’s only BBL team with Scotland-eligible players. No fewer than seven Rocks players are in the 12-man squad, along with head coach Tony Garbelotto. It means that the squad, currently sitting third in the BBL, will have to limp through a couple of regular season matches on a shadow squad, but hopefully by that point a play-off berth is secure for their Scotland squad to come back to.

“In 2006 I was meant to be competing in the Commonwealth Games but I tore my shoulder and it was heartbreak for me, honestly,” said Achara, named alongside para swimmers, power lifters, table tennis players and a triathlete in the latest tranche of Gold Coast selections. “That was before there was a GB team, before all this, before I was even a professional. I remember I was up at the Edinburgh Castle with my ex-girlfriend afterwards and we saw the party they were hosting for Team Scotland after the games. I was heartbroken.

“I was really excited about 2014 too and the prospect of playing in Glasgow then obviously basketball wasn’t chosen as a sport,” he added. “So when 2018 came to the forefront, it was all about making sure we were doing well enough to qualify. Now I am in the mix I am like a little kid at Christmas. I am raring to go and I really feel we can compete. We are not just going to go for a holiday.”

Achara will be living the dream this Spring; in late summer of 2012 he was simply rubbing shoulders with the dream team. “That was just unreal,” recalls this seasoned 34-year-old pro who was born in Stirling, blooded in the sport at Falkirk Fury then played college ball at Duquesne University near Pittsburgh. “We played the Dream Team in a friendly just before it and we had a night out with them afterwards so we got to see how they lived. That was Kevin Durant, James Harden, LeBron James, literally the whole team was there, in fact the only player who didn’t show was Kobe Bryant and that was because he was in the gym, and that was 2am in the morning. That is how committed he was. They are treated like kings wherever they go, so it must be very hard to stay level headed. But you realise how hard they have worked to get where they are.

“In fact, I got so caught up in the whole London 2012 experience that I actually forgot about the actual basketball,” he added. “But I am more level-headed going into this one. I will try to make sure we all stay focused, enjoy the moment but there for a reason and that is to medal.”

The favourites in the basketball competition this Spring will be hosts Australia, New Zealand, England and Nigeria, even if the fact the NBA is reaching its conclusion round about then could deprive the competition of some star quality. The closest Achara ever came to that level was an invite, alongside old GB pal Luol Deng, to a Chicago Bulls summer camp, after being scouted by the likes of the San Antonio Spurs and the LA Lakers coming out of college.

“I had a good college career and I did get scouted by a few teams,” said Achara. “The San Antonio Spurs came to see me, the LA Lakers came to watch me, but I never even entered the draft. I was very fortunate to get a good opportunity in Italy and I took it. It never crossed my mind to go back.”

Basketball is set to move to a 3 on 3 variant for the Olympics in Tokyo in 2020 and perhaps the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in 2022, but one man making history this Spring is Gareth Murray, one man who did make that team back in Melbourne in 2006, a run which included a win over India and an eight-point defeat to Nigeria in Bendigo.

“I am quite happy about that, it is quite good,” says Murray. “I was obviously one of the younger ones at Melbourne, I was 21, and it was a great experience. There was a game against Nigeria which I remember quite well, it came down to like the last minute or two minutes, but we just missed out.”

At the other end of the age scale in this basketball selection is 17-year-old Callan Low, with Gavin Rumgay, Colin Dalgleish and Craig Howieson winning call-ups in table tennis. Youngsters Beth Johnston and Toni Shaw will represent Scotland in para swimming wile Commonwealth Youth Games 1500m gold medallist Erin Wallace has earned a spot alongside her fellow converted distance runner Beth Potter in the triathlon mixed relay.