Asia Cup qualifiers is living up to it’s bill to it’s fullest so far. The past 2 days has seen the best of Associate cricket from the Asian region so far with pre-tournament favourites UAE living up to their billing and registered comfortable victories over Singapore and Nepal in their first two matches in the tournament.
Host’s Malaysia scripted the perfect start to the tournament, defeating Hong Kong on the first day of the tournament and followed it up with an equally impressive performance against Oman, only to come ever close to victory within the final over of Oman’s chase but a Bilal Khan swing over the fence for a six sealed victory for Oman.
The new ODI accredited Asian country Nepal are however scripting a reverse fortune for themselves having lost both their opening two matches in the tournament and now can only hope to win the remaining three matches and also hope that other results go their way to have any chances of qualifying for the tournament final.
UAE and Oman are leading the points table with 2 wins so far with top 2 teams in the points table in the 6-team single round-robin format at the end of the group stage qualifying for the final. The winner of the tournament goes onto join India and Pakistan in the main draw of 2018 Asian Cricket Council Asia Cup in UAE in Sep 2018.
For Hong Kong, Nepal and Malaysia, the situation is not a comfortable one now and they need to start producing results from here on to have any realistic chance to topple both UAE or Oman.
Singapore look a distant entity as compared to others in the tournament so far and would like to provide some crucial International match-time before World T20 Asia B qualifiers in Malaysia in Oct 2018.
Brief Scores (Day 1 & 2):
UAE 254/9 in 50 overs (Ashfaq Ahmed 45, Chirag Suri 65, Rameez Shahzad 35, Adnan Mufti 57 n.o, Sandeep Lamichhane 4/24) beat Nepal 176 all out in 48.5 overs (Subash Khakurel 50, Dipendra Singh Airee 40, Ahmed Raza 4/37, Mohammad Naveed 3/48) by 78 runs
Singapore 150 all out in 41.2 overs (Abhiraj Singh 42, Aryaman Sunil 28, Nadeem Ahmed 4/30, Ehsan Nawaz 2/27, Tanwir Afzal 2/31) lost to Hong Kong 154/5 in 34.2 overs (Nizakat Khan 36, Kinchit Shah 47 n.o, Selladore Vijaykumar 3/25) by 5 wickets
Malaysia 198/8 in 50 overs (Virandeep Singh 74 n.o, Syed Aziz Syed Mubarak 27, Muhammad Anwar 23, Bilal Khan 3/28, Fayyaz Butt 3/43, Zeeshan Maqsood 1/17) lost to Oman 199/8 in 49.2 overs (Vaibhav Wategaonkar 39, Ajay Lalcheta 44 n.o, Abdul Rashid 4/30, Muhammad Anwar 3/36) by 2 wickets
Hong Kong 161 all out in 46.4 overs (Babar Hayat 58, Scott McKechnie 26, Pavandeep Singh 3/13, Suharril Fetri 3/24, Syazrul Idrus 3/37) lost to Malaysia 162/7 in 42.5 overs (Shafiq Sharif 49, Syed Aziz Syed Mubarak 25, Syahadat Ramli 23, Nadeem Ahmed 4/25) by 3 wickets
Nepal 222/9 in 50 overs (Gyanendra Malla 45, Sagar Pun 83, Aarif Sheikh 36, Karan KC 26 n.o, Ajay Lalcheta 2/34, Bilal Khan 2/54) lost to Oman 224/3 in 48 overs (Jatindar Singh 30, Vaibhav Wategaonkar 41, Khawar Ali 84 n.o, Zeeshan Maqsood 45 n.o, Paras Kadka 1/24) by 7 wickets
UAE 312/8 in 49 overs (Ashfaq Ahmed 64, Chirag Suri 111, Shaiman Anwar 75, Amjad Mahboob 3/61, Anantha Krishna 2/53) beat Singapore 97 all out in 25.4 overs (Chetan Suryawanshi 51 n.o, Amjad Mahboob 17, Ahmed Raza 6/20, Rohan Mustafa 2/24) by 215 runs
