The first international captain of the national women's cricket team, Neri Thapa, retired from the game on Monday. Neri had announced her retirement from both international and domestic cricket through Facebook the previous day. In her cricket career of about 17 years, she also brought important titles to Nepal.

Nepal traveled to Malaysia in 2007 to play the ACC Women's Cup, which was the first international tournament for the Nepalese women's cricket team. Neri led this historic Nepali women's cricket team. She took 12 wickets at an average of 2.75 in 5 matches while making Nepal runners-up.

Because of her performance, the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) awarded Neri the title of the best female emerging player of the year in 2007. Neri went to Pakistan and took that award. 

Since 2019, the Twenty20 match between the two countries was internationally recognized by the ICC. Neri played her first Twenty20 International for the Thailand Women's Smash against China in Bangkok. The next month in Thailand, the match against Kuwait in the Women's Twenty20 World Cup Asian qualifiers became her last international match. 

In the same tournament, she took 6 wickets for 8 runs in 4 overs against Hong Kong, which is the second best performance of a Nepali player in Twenty20 internationals and the ninth best in the world. Anjali Chand took 6 wickets without costing any runs in 2.1 overs against Maldives in the 13th South Asian Games held in Pokhara in 2019. 

In 2009, Neri was removed from the captaincy in the ACC Women's Twenty20 in Malaysia due to ill-discipline and Ritu Kanaujia was given the leadership of Nepal. Two years later, Neri returned to the captaincy, but it did not last long and Rubina Chhetri took charge of Nepal. Under Neri's captaincy, Nepal won the ACC U-19 Women's Championship in 2008 and 2010. Recently, Neri was playing domestic cricket from APF club. Devrehate's medium pace bowling was Nery's specialty. She took 17 wickets in 11 Twenty20 international matches through this means. Later she took up spin bowling due to injury. Due to this injury, she was forced to end her playing career on Tuesday.

The player must retire after a certain time. The abilities and skills you have should be transferred. It is not common for a player who has spent the energetic time of his life on the field to stop playing forever. The news of his retirement has become sad for the people of Banke. According to her mentor and senior coach of the National Sports Council, Dipendra Pratap Singh, Neri, who has taken women's cricket to the heights, should not leave the field yet. A player can play Sardar for 22 years. Neri could have played well for another 5/7 years,' he said, 'after being injured, she could not recover herself, so she did not want to return to the game.' 

Coach Singh claimed that Neri is an exemplary player of women's cricket. 'Her sporting skills have never been seen in any player, she had a long career in cricket,' Singh added, 'Neri introduced not only women's cricket, but Nepali cricket to the world.' They say that it should be presented in a different way. A player has a playing period. Now Neri must use his skills as a referee, commentator, coach. They should play a role in the production of new players,' said Thapa, 'for that, the council, sports ministry, local level should create that environment for them.' 

District Sports Development Committee Chairman Sandeepjung Shah complained that Neri's retirement from sports was the result of the state not being able to protect a player. It is a great tragedy that the state could not protect the players who made Nepal known through cricket. We also failed to respect his abilities. District Sports Development Committee became like a club. There is neither a budget nor any program, we have become silent spectators," he said. He said that even the home district Banke could not recognize and utilize Neri's brand. "It is unfortunate that a player who has spent his energetic time in cricket loses and retires from the game," said Shah.

In the year 2077 under the captaincy of Neri, Banke won the women's cricket title of Lumbini state level women's cricket tournament. Nery was named Player of the Match, Player of the Series as well as West Batter after defeating Rupandehi in the final. In the ninth National Games held in Pokhara in the year 2079, she was selected as the player of the series with her excellent performance while playing for the APF club. Neri took 11 wickets in 6 matches of the tournament. APF won the silver medal.