NOT even in their wildest dreams could Scotland's cricketers have imagined their start to the ICC World Twenty20 Qualifiers would work out as well as it did.

Everything they touched seemed to turn to gold as the bowlers restricted the UAE to a paltry 109 before the batsmen blazed their way to victory in only 10 overs for the loss of one wicket.

It was a performance that lived up to every aspect of the coaches' promise that Scotland were going to take an aggressive approach, with catches, run-outs and tight bowling restricting the visitors before the opening batsmen, George Munsey and Kyle Coetzer let rip.

In reaching their target, only 20 of the runs came from running between the wickets, the remaining 90 all came in boundaries as they plundered their way through everything the opposition could bowl at them, while still keeping their discipline.Neither offered a sniff of a chance until Coetzer misjudged a slower delivery and was bowled with the game won and only the last rites remaining.

What makes this impressive is that UAE are not the mugs Scotland made them look. In the equivalent tournament two years ago they were one of the teams that went through at the Scots' expense, eventually finishing fourth.

Nor did the visitors hand them the game, making sprint start after being put in to bat. Once the wickets started to fall, however, they kept tumbling. Two run-outs helped, Calum MacLeod and Richie Berrington both reaping the reward for direct hits, but the real breakthrough came when the spinners came on to replace the seam attack that were bowling too short.

Between, them Michael Leask and Mark Watt put the brakes on the visitors attack, forcing them to play rash shots to try to keep the scoring rate up and collecting three wickets each as the UAE tried to bash the ball over the boundary and kept coming up short to where a fielder was waiting.

"It was a very convincing start," said Leask. "The fielding set the tone along with some pretty good bowling between us, Mark Watt, myself and the seamers did an unbelievable job in keeping them to 109. I would not have said it was a spinners wicker - I was not finding much turn. More a string of dots and then you know the way they play. It is almost dot, dot and then look for the big shot. If we could control that then we would be on top and we did that well.

"UAE have been tough on us in the past but the big challenges have still to come, Holland and Afghanistan over the next couple of games but we held ourselves in good stead here and got ourselves in good form."

Reaching the target off just 60 balls could prove vital later in the tournament. Last time, they finished the pool stage with an identical win-loss record to Nepal but lost out on third place in the pool by less than 1000th of a point on the net run rate, so putting themselves in such a strong position early on will be important if rankings are tight at the end.

"Knowing how little the margin was last time, that net run rate in our favour could be key," added Leask. "If we do have tight games we have to at least make it as tight as we can. We have such a dynamic fielding unit, it is great to see boys diving - that extra run saved could be the difference in the net run rate or the next game. We have shown what a good fielding side we are."

Later in the day, also in Group B, Afghanistan beat the Netherlands by 32 runs.