The Nepali youth cricket team has made it to the semi-finals of the ACC U-16 Eastzone Cup cricket tournament. Former champions Nepali team defeated Indonesia by a huge margin of 370 runs on Sunday and entered the last four with one match left. This is Nepal's third win in a row.
Having a huge target of 421 runs, Indonesia was bowled out for 50 runs in 24.3 overs. Indonesia's batsmen could not stand against captain Bipin Prasad Sharma's bowling. He took 6 wickets. For that, Vipin spent only 12 runs in 7.3 overs. Shubham Khanal and Sugam Budhathoki took 1 wicket each.
In the match at Selangor Turf Club in Malaysia, Kavin Neeraj Chanda from Indonesia scored 15 runs and Divit Nanda scored 14 runs, while others could not score double-digit runs. Before that, Nepal, who had lost the toss and batted, made a huge total of 420 runs for 5 wickets by playing in the stipulated 50 overs.
is the highest total made by Nepal's age group and senior team in any 50 over tournament. This is a high score in this competition as well. Nepal's opener famous Jaisi played a century innings. He scored 132 runs off 114 balls by hitting 15 fours and 1 six. He shared a partnership of 132 runs for the first wicket with Pradhan Yadav. For that they used 62 balls. The change added 71 runs off 28 balls with 4 fours and 8 sixes. Shivans Bajgai, who came after that, could score only 4 runs in 6 balls. The famous shared 148 runs with Raunak Srivastava for the third wicket. They faced 136 balls. Raunak hit 8 fours and 2 sixes in 71 balls and scored a personal 88 runs. Then Sugam Budhathoki and Joy Thapa led the team to a huge score by sharing a partnership of 74 runs. Joy scored 57 runs off 41 balls with 7 fours. Sugam scored an unbeaten 39 off 34 balls. Along with him, Roshan Shahi, who is unbeaten, added 10 runs. From Indonesia, Kitut Dharamputra took 2 wickets, Kavin Neeraj, Mahendra Aji and Rehan Riza took 1 wicket each.
Nepal in group 'A' is at the top with 6 points after winning all three matches. Nepal defeated Singapore by 6 wickets in the first match and Japan by 9 wickets in the second match. Singapore has 6 points with 3 wins from 4 matches. Japan and Indonesia have 2 points each, while Bhutan has no points. Indonesia has been eliminated with one game to play.
Nepal will now play Bhutansaag on Tuesday. Group 'B' includes host Malaysia, Hong Kong, Maldives, Thailand and Myanmar. The winner and runner-up of both groups will enter the semi-finals. The final will be held on July 5.
