What a difference it makes to have played competitive 50-overs cricket prior to playing an International tournament and also to have toured the host country a year earlier to know the conditions, that would be on offer.
That’s USA for you, a team that has been improving a lot in the past couple of months during their campaign in Cricket West Indies Regional Super50 competition. The exposure to their senior players is now showing off in Oman, where they have notched up back-to-back victories over Uganda and Kenya respectively. And the big margin win over Kenya also propelled them to the top of points table, and on equal points as host’s Oman, after the completion of 2nd round of group phase matches.
Similarly, the outing during the 2018 Asia Cup qualifiers in Malaysia also helped Singapore to get some 50-overs exposure under their belt and although they lost their first fixture against Oman, they bounced back strongly against Denmark to register their first win of the tournament.
It’s painful to see the way Kenya is going in the tournament so far with no set back-up plans in-case the original doesn’t work out and the batting hasn’t been a coordinated effort so far in both the matches. Both themselves and Denmark have a tough task of winning all their remaining three matches (which includes the match between themselves as well) to have any hopes of competing for the top 2 spots for qualification.
Brief Scores:
USA 254 all out in 50 overs (Aaron Jones 69, Hayden Walsh 48, Steven Taylor 41, Jaskaran Malhotra 28, Nelson Odhiambo 4/50, Nehemiah Odhiambo 3/51, Shem Ngoche 1/38) beat Kenya 96 all out in 26 overs (Rakep Patel 19, Nehemiah Odhiambo 15, Elmore Hutchinson 3/17, Ali Khan 3/36, Saurabh Netravalkar 2/10, Timil Patel 1/1) by 158 runs
Singapore 254 all out in 49.3 overs (Aritra Dutta 87, Arjun Mutreja 57, Rezza Gaznavi 40, Janak Prakash 19, Saif Ahmad 3/46, Anique Uddin 2/36, Nicolaj Laegsgaard 2/36) beat Denmark 160 all out in 35.4 overs (Hamid Shah 85, Saif Ahmad 23, Anantha Krishna 4/37, Amjad Mahboob 3/28, Anish Paraam 2/16) by 94 runs
