For Scotland simply to be in this stage of the competition and playing their first ever Twenty20 against India – a previous meeting at the 2007 World Cup was rained off without a ball being bowled – is a fine achievement, but it is seen more as a staging post than a destination. “We need to be bold and brave to move these players to the next level,” Kyle Coetzer, their captain, said. “We can’t be happy with just playing a few Super 12 games and then going home. There were a few doors left open we didn’t quite go through, but that’s for us to deal with when we get home.”

After Virat Kohli, on his 33rd birthday, won the toss for the first time in this tournament and put them in the idea that Scotland would kick open this particular door lasted little longer than George Munsey, whose dismissal in the last over of the powerplay precipitated a collapse from 27 for one to 29 for four in the space of 10 balls.

By then Munsey had produced one extraordinary shot – off Jasprit Bumrah, mind you – to flick the ball off his ankles and into the stands with the most delicious ping off the bat, and three successive fours – off Ravichandran Ashwin, mind you – including two aerial reverse sweeps which, given India had two fielders specifically placed to stop him attempting them, were joyously cocksure. But India’s bowling was excellent – Mohammed Shami’s yorker to dismiss Alasdair Evans, a third wicket in three balls (one a run-out), was really quite unfair – and their batting imperious.

Earlier New Zealand had beaten Namibia by 52 runs in Sharjah, though without banking the kind of net run rate boost that would have allowed them to go into the Afghanistan game with a buffer over their opponents.

On a difficult pitch for batting no one was in the middle for more than 27 balls, and the Black Caps needed a fifth-wicket partnership of 76 in six overs between Glenn Phillips and Jimmy Neesham to reach 163 for four. Namibia batted out their 20 overs, reaching 111 for seven with no batter scoring more than a run a ball.