Respect but no fear; that’s the mantra that will be going round the Scotland dressing-room today as they prepare for the country’s first official cricket international against England, a match widely seen as the most important in Scotland’s short time as part of the world’s top-ranked one-day sides.

It has been the match that has been hanging over the team all season, the biggest chance to show the rest of the country that the sport north of the border deserves to be taken seriously, and an opportunity to prove that they deserve their place at the sport’s international top table. It loomed even larger than the game against New Zealand, who are ranked higher than England and should, in pure cricketing terms, have been the bigger draw.

To have given it that status, however, would have been to ignore the long history of Scotland-England clashes, regardless of sport, and while today’s match is due to be played in front of a sell-out 6,000 crowd in Edinburgh, with Cricket Scotland having pulled out all the stops to make it feel like a proper international, the one against the New Zealand was a low-key affair compared to the one today.

Yet, says Navdeep Poonia, the Glasgow-born Warwickshire batsman, today’s game is also a more comfortable exercise for the Scots. Players such as himself and Kyle Coetzer, the Durham batsman, have played with or against many of the England side and feel they know exactly what to expect. Even those who are based in Scotland, which is the majority of the side, have experience of playing against many of the opposition through their involvement in the Friends Provident games at the start of the season.

“There is a degree of familiarity,” he said. “It is not like playing against a Ricky Ponting, who you could come across only once in your career, we all know what these guys are capable of. The key is to forget who you are playing against and just concentrate on what is in front of you and to be confident in what you can do.” There is a lot of pressure on Poonia, one of three players in the Scotland squad on current county contracts in England - alongside Calum MacLeod, his Warwickshire colleague, and Coetzer - to justify his call-up to the side. County commitments have meant that he has not always been available and it was only at the tail end of last week that Scotland’s selectors were able to confirm that the trio would be allowed to play - though their case cannot have been helped by their decision to call 19-year-old MacLeod up to last week’s matches against Kenya and then not use him.

Right from the start of the season, the Scotland-based players have had half an eye on this match and it is probably another advantage to the county-based element of the side that they have had far too much day-to-day cricket to worry about to worry about a the long-term future. “I first thought about it a couple of months ago when it seemed to be a long way in the future and then I was with the other players and talking about it when I suddenly realised it was only a week and a bit away, the time flew by,” Poonia said.

Contrast that with Neil McCallum, who is back on his home ground for the game and aiming to make as big an impact as he did on his international debut on the same ground when his 68 plus an 80 from Ryan Watson, now the captain, held the Scotland innings together against Pakistan in one of the few recent internationals against a leading Test country to have beaten the rain in Edinburgh.

“The butterflies have been there already,” he admitted. “This is going to be a big day, an exciting one but a big challenge for all of us. It is a huge, massive occasion and really important that we give a good account of ourselves.”

For Peter Steindl, the coach, the important thing is that the Scotland players should give a good account of themselves. While nobody is daring to talk about the chances of a home win, even England know nothing is impossible in sport.

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