UAE defeated Nepal by 6 wickets with 9 balls remaining at Tribhuvan University Ground today, despite crowd interruption.
Nepal chose to bat first after winning the toss. But batting collapse made Nepal to a modest total of 96 runs for the loss of 9 wickets in their 20 overs.
Nepali openers Anil Mandal and Subash Khakurel failed to give a solid start. The openers put 19 runs on the board before an unfortunate run out of Anil Mandal for 5 runs opened the collapse. Subash Khakurel was clean bowled for 14 runs.
Mehboob Alam scored a brisk 17 runs with 2 fours and 1 six while the second-highest scorer for Nepal was UAE’s extras. Binod Bhandari contributed 14 runs. Prithu Baskota held the innings for a while but couldn’t continue as he went out adding 10 runs (19 balls) on the board.
Seven batsmen were unable to convert their single-digit score to double and Gyanendra Malla went for a duck. Nepal played its full quota and managed to score 95 runs after the loss of 9 wickets.
Man of the Match, UAE’s Ahmed Raza grabbed 3-12 in his 4 overs to restrict the home team. Similarly, EHSN Silva and R Mustafa took 2 wickets each for UAE.
During the chase, Opener Amjad Ali was dismissed by Bhattarai for 5 runs but Nepal then allowed the pressure on themselves. 4 catches were dropped and runout chances went begging. Shaiman Anwar, 33 runs (33 balls) top-scored for the UAE team played his part and was caught by Sanjam off Bhattarai’s bowling.
Vikrant Shetty (10) and wicketkeeper Abdul Rehman (19) remained not out and took the game away from Nepal.
Despite Amrit Bhattrai’s three wickets for Nepal, UAE managed a comfortable win at 18.2 overs.
At 14.1 overs, an overthrow cost Nepal 5 extra runs (2 runs and 4 overthrows) and the next ball, was punished for four at the third-man region, then the defeat for the home team was on the card. At the 15-over mark, UAE were 80/4 and was near to the victory. Then, a repeat of Nepal v USA in WCL DIV 5 was seen at the ground. The crowd could not see the national team losing and started to throw bottles & stones at the ground and the match was stopped for a while.
Minor injuries to Policemen and security personal were heard but yet not confirmed by CAN.
Play then resumed after 15 minutes, Paras gave 5 runs while Amrit in his last over gave away 6 runs. At 18.1 overs, another catch was dropped off Anil and Vikrant Shetty, Man of the match of the previous game against Kuwait secured the victory by hitting a four.
