Mumbai, February 16 Nepal coach Nick Pothas believes the country's players need to be put under more pressure going forward in order to achieve tangible improvements, and he urged them to avoid repeating mistakes from the last two matches when they play their final T20 World Cup game against Scotland here on Tuesday.
Nepal had a promising start to their T20 World Cup campaign with a narrow loss to England, but their performances have declined since, losing heavily to Italy and the West Indies by 10 and nine wickets respectively.
"If we want to improve Nepal cricket, we need to have the right infrastructure in place. Teams only get better when there is pressure on players to perform. I'm not sure what exists in Nepal, but players need to feel like they are under pressure to perform in order for your cricket to improve," Pothas told reporters ahead of the Group C match here.
Pothas said that there is a lot of talent in the team, but the learning pace is not as fast as it should be.
"Unfortunately, what we are not doing is learning fast enough as a group. Leading into the Scotland game, all we want to see is that the guys compete, but not make the same mistakes we are making repeatedly. That is the important part."
"We are a very energetic side, with a very passionate team and a great following who have come to watch us play, so we would like to give that following something to remember this World Cup by," Pothas added.
The former South African wicketkeeper-batter also said that exposure to conditions and situations outside their comfort zone has also affected Nepal's performances.
"We are expecting the players to learn quicker, (but) now what makes that a little bit more difficult is exposure to various conditions and exposure to high-level cricket," he said.
"For these players, a lot of their cricket is played in Nepal where the pitches suit their style of play and you can get away with not executing quite as much because of the standard of the cricket. When you come to a World Cup, you don't get away with that kind of thing."
Pothas admitted that Nepal will need a more robust structure in domestic cricket in order to make the national side stronger.
"That's a conversation to be had with (Cricket Association of Nepal's secretary) Paras (Khadka) as to how we structure the side," he said.
"One thing I will say is that I've been on three different assignments with Nepal and in every one of those assignments, we've had two managers in the change room and they've been different managers."
Former New Zealand player Tom Bruce, who joined the Scottish side in August 2025 and played his maiden game in this T20 World Cup against the West Indies, said the challenge for Associate nations is to be at their best in the group stages.
"You're only playing four games in a World Cup. You've got to be at your very best every single time," he said, reflecting on Scotland's defeats to the West Indies and England earlier.
England's qualification for the Super Eights stage on Monday meant the contest between Scotland and Nepal here would be a dead rubber.
Bruce said having a structure where Associate nations play against top-tier nations would be "brilliant".
"I think it would be brilliant. (But) ultimately, until we see action, nothing's going to probably happen. We'd love to see more cricket, Associate nations against tier one nations," he said.
"There has been a lot of talk around the cricket calendar and what that needs to look like in order to accommodate international cricket, World Cups, franchise cricket, the Olympics is also coming in, trying to get more nations playing cricket."
"You see the success stories of Nepal (and) Italy (in) this tournament. You want to see more nations playing cricket and you want to see them playing against the best nations," he said.
