Gavin Hamilton has challenged his Scotland side to overcome the ‘fearless’ warriors of Afghanistan and come through this week’s World Twenty20 Qualifier in the UAE.

The Scots are grouped with the Afghans, top-ranked Ireland and the U.S.A as eight teams arrive in the Gulf to squabble over two places at the finals in the Caribbean in April.

Afghanistan have lit up the second tier of world cricket in the past 12 months and after subjecting Scotland to two demoralising defeats at last year’s World Cup Qualifier in South Africa, are desperate to mix it with the elite for the first time.

Captain Hamilton admits his team, who were too good for Uganda but received two thrashings by Kenya in last week’s warm-ups in Nairobi, struggle to produce the uninhibited cricket that can settle Twenty20 games when conditions are good, as they will be this week.

‘We can't play cricket like Afghanistan can, or possibly like the Canadians,’ admitted the veteran left-hander. ‘That's just not how we go about our cricket.‘

They all come out with no inhibitions and there is no fear of failure. I'd love to play our cricket with no fear of failure but it just doesn't happen sometimes.

‘Our guys have played a lot of cricket and been to a lot of big tournaments, whereas it's a new thing for the Afghans.‘But I'd like to think that if they come out and bat like that, we can match them in the bowling, and in different areas of the batting, and we can certainly match them in the field. ‘They may come off two or three times out of five, but I'd like to think we can perform on a consistent basis.’

Even if Scotland emerge from their group they will go into ‘Super Four’ combat with the likes of Kenya, Canada (almost exclusively an expat Asian side) and the Netherlands, who famously beat England at last summer’s finals.But Hamilton said: ‘Twenty20 can more often than not depend on three or four players.

‘You get three or four people performing in that duration of tournament and we're not going to be far away. And it's quite nice not to be going into this as favourites.‘Don't get me wrong: it's not like we are going in feeling that we are not going to qualify, but if we can get four or five people performing at the top of their game, I really don't think we'll be far away.

‘We're not at Australia's level but I want to go about this the way they do – they have powerful and talented cricketers coming at them and they just do everything right.

‘They stick to the basics, they field well, they squeeze – they don't stand out as flash players but they do everything right.‘I want everyone to be disciplined, keep everything very basic and just do what they do best. You can't be something you're not.’