Paras Khadka led from the front scoring an unbeaten 85 as Nepal defeated The United Arab Emirates in their T20 warm-up match by five wickets with three balls remaining in steaming heat of Dubai.
With 21 needed from 11 balls and Binod Bhandari out just the previous ball Paras Khadka smacked Nasir Aziz for six and a four off second and third ball to bring Nepal back into the game. Vesawkar then scored a very needed boundary in the 5th ball. Nepal got 15 runs of that over.Pun and Khadka got the remaining six run in 3 balls with 2 boundaries.
Paras scored 9 fours and 4 sixes in his chanceless 85 and chased 139 nearly single handedly for Nepal.
Coming into bat at 18/2 with both openers back in pavilion Paras played a typical Paras innings- first he repaired the damage that was done and then in latter over scored boundaries to push the run-rate.
Malla made fluent 25 of 30 balls as the captain vice captain duo added vital 69 runs for third wicket.
Early in the partnership Malla was the aggressor but Paras stepped up in the ninth over taking 12 runs off Amjad Javed. With Paras taking the risk Malla played risk free game and was completely focused on giving Khadka the strike back. Malla was eventually out on 15th over with Nepal still needing 52 runs off just 33 balls.
Paras made 39 of those 52 runs on his own with 3 fours and 2 sixes taking just 20 balls.
With Paras around other batsman didn’t have to bother a lot. Binod Bhandari who added 39 with the captain made just six runs. Vesawkar scored an important boundary in the 5th ball of second last over but those four were his only runs.
Sagar Pun scored a boundary when Nepal needed just 1 more win from 4 balls.
Earlier thanks to accurate bowling from spinners Nepal restricted UAE to 138/7 in an easy paced wicket. Sagar, Basanta and Gauchan who bowled 11 overs gave away just 57 runs in 11 overs. Sagar and Basanta got one scalps a piece.
Khurram Khan starred with the bat for UAE scoring 55 of just 40 balls. Khan came into bat with UAE in trouble for 17/2 in 3 overs. He added quick runs for UAE and at end of 8 overs UAE were 62/2 and heading for easily towards 150.
Sagar Pun broke the third wicket partnership and after that Nepal were able to put brakes on UAE’s scoring. Rohan Mustafa (16/24b) and Mohammad Shafiq(12/15b) found Nepali bowlers hard to get runs from.
UAE were 106/5 at end of 17 overs and looked as though even 125 would be hard to come by.
UAE had played Nepali fast bowling pretty well all through out the innings.The 7 overs from fast bowlers- Amrit and Jitendra gave away 63 runs. Amjad Javed played the final two overs from the fast bowlers with the same ease. He scored 19 off just 9 balls as Amrit and Jitendra gave 24 runs in the last two overs-12 each in 18th and 19th over.
Jitendra who was playing the first International Match for Nepal bowled the 20th over.Although he went for runs-he got wickets of the first and the fifth ball of the last over. Jitendra ended the game with 3 wickets off 3 overs giving away 30 runs.
SUMMARY
Nepal 142/5 in 19.4 overs(Paras Khadka 85*/62b Gyanendra Malla 25/30b Nasir 3/44) beat UAE 138/7(Khurram Khan 55(40), Amjad Javed 19(9) Jitendra 3/30)
