All four Associate nations, which recently impressed at the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015, will be in action from Tuesday in their opening round matches of the four-day first-class Intercontinental Cup 2015-17, which is a pathway for Test cricket.
Ireland will face the UAE at Malahide and Scotland would take on Afghanistan at Stirling.
The side that wins the eight-team round-robin competition will play the 10th ranked side on the Reliance ICC Test Team Rankings (as at 31 December 2017) in the four-match ICC Test Challenge during 2018. If the Associate Member wins the series, to be played on a home and away basis, then it will become the 11th Test nation.
This is reigning champion Ireland's seventh appearance in the competition, which also features former winner Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Namibia, Netherlands, Papua New Guinea (PNG), 2004 champion Scotland and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Ireland's team new coach John Bracewell said that it was nice that his first game in charge would be at home and hopefully the crowd at Malahide would come out and support them this week. He added that It was obviously a huge boost for them to be playing UAE in home conditions and hopefully they would get their campaign off to a winning start against a dangerous UAE side."
Meanwhile, UAE coach Aqib Javed HAS said that the prospect for the eventual winner of playing Test cricket ensures the pathway for associate teams to take a seat at the 'top table' of cricket was now well and truly established. That long term goal was in everyone's mind, our job will be to focus on winning session by session, game by game, it goes without saying the team that does that best will win.
Scotland and Afghanistan, who face each other at Sterling, have met three times in the ICC Intercontinental Cup, with Afghanistan winning all three matches. This is Scotland's seventh appearance in the ICC Intercontinental Cup, while for Afghanistan, this will be their third appearance in a competition.
