A 41 balls century has gone in vain, but UAE is surely now one of the most advancing teams in international arena, however, they have been battered by an incredible cricket team of Nepal.
It was a thriller of match at Tribhuvan University Ground where Nepal hosted UAE in a scheduled league match of ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup League 2. A victory would push them to the third place in the points table and subsequently to World Cup qualifiers.
Coming to this match, Nepal had already won their 10 of last 11 ODIs so the belief and optimism was there and it worked out in pretty much their expected way. Batting first, UAE scored 310 runs in front of more than 20,000 spectators which was a remarkable thing in itself.
UAE’s 33 years old Asif Khan has his best day in ODI career, scoring a 41 balls century, leading his team from 175/5 in 37.3 overs to 310 runs total on board. In the beginning on his innings, he was batting at 23 off 24 balls then he decided to go berserk and UAE scored 102 runs off last 6 overs.
Nepal batters have other plans though, a tough job at hand but they did it successfully without having a great start to their batting. What was key in their batting was actually intent, 26 years Kushal Bhurtel set the tone with his 35 balls 50 while next three batters couldn’t make much contribution to the scoreboard.
Bhim Sharki scored 67 off 76 balls and Aarif Sheikh made 52 off 62 balls, both sharing a key 83 runs partnership that kept Nepal in the game despite losing 5 wickets. Actually, it was 44 runs partnership in 29 balls between Dipendra Singh Airee and Gulsan Jha (50 off 48 balls) that changed the fortunes of Nepal.
With bad light stopping the play, Nepal had to climb up the revised target of 261 runs in 44 overs but thankfully they had 269 on the board by the end of 44th over.
Nepal have reached the qualifiers, but the job is not done yet, however, a milestone has been achieved. They will compete with 10 good teams in Zimbabwe to book a place in World Cup berth.