Kuwait dominated proceedings in both the bowling and batting departments in the opening game of the 3-match T20I series in Qatar. The day/night encounter at Asian Town International Stadium saw Kuwait bowlers restrict Qatar to 154, before chasing down the total in the 17th over to win the match by 7 wickets.
The match was set up by the bowlers, who picked up wickets at regular intervals during Qatar innings and barring few batsmen making bulk of the runs, the eventual total was a sub-par score. Kuwait’s Ravija de Silva, who hit a T20I century during ACC Western region T20 tournament in Jan 2019 in Oman, started off well again before an unbeaten helf-century knock by Adnan Idrees took them to their target with ease.
The second match in the series went down to the super over after both the team’s finished on 112 runs. In the super over, Qatar scored 14 runs and restricted Kuwait to 12 to win the match by 2 runs. This was the second tied T20I match between Kuwait and Qatar in 2019 after the first one during the ACC Western region T20 tournament.
Both Qatar and Kuwait are preparing themselves ahead of ICC men’s T20 World Cup Asia regional finals in Singapore in Jul 2019. They will be competing against Nepal, Malaysia and Singapore for one qualification spot into the global qualifiers in Oct/Nov 2019 in UAE.
01st T20I: Qatar 154/9 in 20 overs (Muhammad Tanveer 50, Faisal Khan 35, Rizlan Muhammad 27, Noman Sarwar 19, Iliyas Ahmed 3/17, Muhammad Kashif 3/32, Jandu Hamoud 1/15, Muhammad Ahsan 1/34) lost to Kuwait 157/3 in 16.3 overs (Adnan Idrees 79, Ravija de Silva 45, Muhammad Kashif 23 n.o, Inam ul Haq 1/13, Iqbal Hussain Chaudhary 1/29, Awais Malik 1/34) by 7 wickets
02nd T20I: Kuwait 112/8 in 20 overs (Muhammad Aslam 26, Usman Waheed 20, Shiraz Khan 16 n.o, Numan Sarwar 3/17, Iqbal Hussain Chaudhary 1/24, Muhammad Nadeem 1/11, Awais Malik 1/31) tied with Qatar 112/8 in 20 overs (Rizlan Muhammad 32, Tamoor Sajjad 27 n.o, Faisal Khan 20, Iliyas Ahmed 2/19, Muhammad Ahsan 1/19, Muhammad Aslam 1/21, Jandu Hamoud 1/29). Super Over: Qatar (14 runs) defeat Kuwait (12 runs) by 2 runs
