The final round of group phase matches in the ongoing Asia Cup qualifiers in Malaysia had four team’s in contention (UAE, Nepal, Hong Kong and Oman) for a place in the final of the tournament.
At the end of day’s action, UAE and Hong Kong secured their spot in the finals and will now clash in the televised match on 06th Sep 2018 at Kinrara Oval for the opportunity to join India and Pakistan in the group stage of 2018 Asia Cup in UAE. The final will be broadcasted live on Star Sports network and it’s OTT platform, HotStar.
A fascinating contest is on the cards between a team, who want to show the Full member world that they belong at the top tier of cricket and should get more fixtures to develop further, and a team, who are hurting inside since World Cup qualifiers since Mar 2018 after losing their ODI status and also funding due to non-inclusion of cricket in the Asian Games.
The day belonged to three crucial performances from Rohan Mustafa (UAE Captain), Anshuman Rath (Hong Kong Captain) and Anish Paraam (Singapore), who guided their respective team’s to victories. A special note for Nepal’s Sandeep Lamichhane, who almost single-handedly took the match away from Hong Kong’s grasp, if only Nepal had another 20-25 runs in the bag.
It was a disappointing end to Oman’s campaign in the tournament and their no-result in the match against Hong Kong due to rain brought down their downfall but in the match against UAE, the pressure told on their batting line-up after losing crucial wickets in the middle over after the bowlers did a brilliant job in keeping UAE down to only 208.
Brief Scores:
Singapore 276/9 in 50 overs (Anish Paraam 100, Manpreet Singh 34, Anantha Krishna 30, Rohan Rangarajan 26, Syazrul Idrus 3/51, Suharril Fetri 2/42, Abdul Rashid 2/50) beat Malaysia 247 all out in 45.5 overs (Shafiq Sharif 93, Ahmed Faiz 59, Virandeep Singh 53, Amjad Mahboob 5/49, Selladore Vijayumar 1/20) by 29 runs
UAE 208/8 in 50 overs (Rohan Mustafa 71, Ashfaq Ahmed 24, Abdul Shakoor 21 n.o, Zeeshan Maqsood 2/21, Fayyaz Butt 2/43) beat Oman 195 all out in 47.2 overs (Aaqib Sulehri 45, Naseem Khushi 27 n.o, Rohan Mustafa 2/31, Amir Hayat 2/48, Mohammad Naveed 2/51) by 13 runs
Nepal 95 all out off 37.5 overs (Aarif Sheikh 18, Ehsan Khan 4/15, Aizaz Khan 2/16, Tanwir Afzal 2/31) lost to Hong Kong 96/7 in 32.3 overs (Anshuman Rath 52, Sandeep Lamichhane 5/27) by 3 wickets
