A big occasion often creates nerves in any young player for that matter, getting onto the field at Lord’s Cricket Ground. On 31st May 2018, it wasn’t about nerves at all for Nepal’s Sandeep Lamichhane, who represented ICC World XI against West Indies in the hurricane relief T20I match.
Having made his debut in the cash-rich IPL few weeks ago, Sandeep has seen how big debut’s turn out for young players in front of big crowds in India. His T20I debut, thus, was not a huge burden of a situation, but expectations were high back home and everywhere in the globe, where supporters of Nepali cricket stayed awake at different time zones to see him in action.
Turned out to be a damp squib on offer for him in the end, as he bowled just a single over, which gave away 12 runs and wasn’t brought back into the attack. And while the whole World XI batting crumbled, Sandeep also got the chance to bat and scored 4 T20I runs to his name. The match was a foregone conclusion with West Indies hammering 199/4 and then bowling out World XI for 127 runs in the 17th over to win the contest by 72 runs.
But the experience was surreal to train with Andy Flower and play alongside big names like Shahid Afridi, Shoaib Malik and Rashid Khan, to name a few in the bowling line-up to watch and learn from on a global stage. Plus he got to play against his St.Kitts & Nevis Patriots teammates in Chris Gayle, Evin Lewis and Carlos Brathwaite, so the experience was good enough on many fronts for Sandeep.
His next match at Lord’s is not far away when Nepal takes on Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and Netherlands on 31st Jul 2018 in a T20 Triangular. And with him being the leading spinner in the Nepali squad, people will get to see him more with the ball in his National colours.
