Nepal’s Women’s Cricket Team In The World Cup For The First Time Nepal has qualified for the U-19 Women’s T20 World Cup for the first time, shocking the host UAE.
Even though Nepal’s senior men’s team has played in the T-20 World Cup twice and the U-19 team has played in the World Cup 8 times, no team from Nepal has been able to reach the World Cup in women’s cricket.
Although the senior women’s team did not advance from the preliminary selection, the U-19 women’s team managed to qualify for the World Cup this time.
Nepal went to play the qualifying match in UAE to reach the U-19 World Cup. Only one team could reach the World Cup from the four participating Asian teams namely Kuwait, Nepal, Thailand and UAE.
Nepal lost to UAE by 13 runs after defeating other teams in the selection held in double round-robin. In order to qualify for the World Cup, it was not enough for Nepal to beat the home team UEA in the second match, they had to win on net run rate.
In the second match against UAE on Wednesday, if Nepal batted first, they would have scored 140 runs and won by 21 or more runs.
After UAE won the toss and chose to bat first, Nepal had to stop at the lowest possible score. Due to the good performance of the bowlers, Nepal also took 9 wickets when they managed to limit UAE to 83 runs.
With the help of Krisma Gurung’s 4, and Riya Sharma and Seema KC’s 2-2 wickets, Nepal managed to restrict UAE to 83-9 runs in 20 overs. Captain Samaira Dharnidharka scored the most 31 runs for UAE, while Rinitha Rajith added 20 runs.
Lavanya Kenny and Indhuja Nandakumar added 10 runs each. After Krishama Gurung dismissed 3 players including Indhuja in the 18th over, Nepal stopped the scoring pace.
For Nepal, Krishna took 4 wickets for 17 runs while keeping 1 maiden in 4 overs. Rhea spent 12 runs and Simana took 2 wickets in 4 overs.
Wicketkeeper Savitri Dhami, who started aggressively, got out after scoring 12 runs in the fourth ball of the third over. Faced with 9 balls, she hit a boundary. Then captain Pooja Mahato shared an important partnership of 30 runs with opener Sana Praveen.
Pooja scored 21 runs in 18 balls with the help of 4 fours when he got out in the last ball of the seventh over, Nepal was in a position of 48-2. From there, Sana Pravin and vice-captain Soni Pakhrin started the innings. This pair shared an unbeaten 38 runs for the third wicket and took Nepal to the World Cup.
All 16 teams finished
With the selection of Nepal from Asia, all 16 teams to play in the World Cup have been finalized. The U-19 Women’s T20 World Cup is scheduled to be held in Malaysia from January 18 to February 7, with the top 10 teams from the previous edition automatically qualified for the host nation, Malaysia.
Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the West Indies who played in the previous World Cup were directly selected.
Along with Nepal, Nigeria, Samawa, Scotland and America have come from the regional selection. Since there is no other team in the American region, the United States was automatically selected to play in the World Cup without qualifying.
Scotland, which was selected from the European region, played in the World Cup last time. The previous time from the Asian region, UAE reached the World Cup after beating Nepal and Thailand. This time Nepal reached the World Cup after stopping UAE.