Glesson 'gutted' after Papua New Guinea miss out on promotion

Papua New Guinea coach Martin Gleeson admitted that his side was devastated after missing out on a place at the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier.

Uganda’s win over Argentina today by 99 runs meant that the African side moved ahead of PNG on net run rate and left it in third place in the final table.

“We are pretty gutted to be honest to be in a situation where we have won four out of our five matches, three of them quite easily, and still miss out on qualification,” said Gleeson.

“Across the tournament we didn’t score enough runs and it is quite ironic that Argentina’s failure to make runs today cost us.

However, Gleeson believes that his side will benefit from the experience of this event and that his young side will be a force to be reckoned with in the future.

“There is lots of hope for the future. It has been an interesting experience for us as we came here fully expecting to qualify, despite the fact some of the pre-tournament coverage suggesting that we were going to struggle which disappointed me.

“We have shown that we play good, aggressive, competitive cricket, but we are unfortunately now going to have to wait two years for the next chance to play at a higher level.”