Gyanmandu:
Nepal U19 leads with their first win of the ICC Asia U-19 World Cup Qualifiers at Kuala Lumpur after they defeated Singapore U-19 by 217 runs on Friday. Singapore won the toss and willed on bowling first, Nepal made a staggering 282runs in 46 overs before all out. In reply to Nepal's 283 runs, team Singapore faced a humiliating loss with Singapore's all batsmen bowled out for 65 runs in 31 overs.
Nepal U-19’s opening pair couldn't cope with the surface of the Selangor Turf Club. Losing two quick wickets of Gautam and Aasif with only 18 runs on the board, skipper RK Paudel and Sarraf resurrected the inning with 90 runs stand for third wicket. Unfortunately, Sarraf missed his half century before getting caught out at Sudarshan’s hand on Gune’s ball scoring 47 runs off 53 balls. With Nepal reduced to 18-2, skipper Rohit Kumar Paudel walked on to the pitch building the inning to 274-8 before his wicket fell at 46thover. He missed his century by 5 runs despite his brilliant knock. Similarly for the sake of Nepal, Rashid Khan scored 48, Kamal Singh Airee scored 31 and Bhim Sarkee scored 26 runs. Whereas, Atharva Gune was the standout bowler for Singapore U19 side. He took 4 crucial wickets including P Sarraf (47), RK Paudel(95), KS Airee (31) and S Tamang (0) to restrict Nepal U19 side to the total of 282-10 at 46thover. He was on a hattrick while he packed Nepal U19 at 46thover with his personal performance of 8-1-37-4. SImilarly, Rahul Sharma and Binit Meheta took 2-2 wickets for Singapore.
Singapore kept losing their wickets starting from Chabria being run out by Rashaid Khan at 5thover. Venugopal, the second top scorer for Singapore U19 side got caught out by Rohit Kumar Poudel on Malla’s ball scoring 18 runs at 13thover. In addition to adding the highest 28 runs for Singapore, Ishan Swaney could not play well against Nepal's bowling with all of the other remaining batsmen failing to score runs on double digit figure. Nepal's wild fire, Pawan Sarraf was able to struck 3 individual wickets along with Kushal Malla &Surya Tamang bagging 2-2 wickets each.
Now Nepal will play with UAE in the second game on Saturday. Nepal will play Malaysia in April 15 in the third game while April 16 is all set for game against Oman. Nepal will play Kuwait in the fifth and final game on April 18.
