Nepal’s World Cup journey ended with a massive defeat, Netherlands won the decisive match by 7 wickets

KATHMANDU: Nepal’s dream of competing in the World Cup has come to an end. Nepal’s ambition of reaching the Super Six has also been destroyed after a 7-wicket defeat to the Netherlands in the ICC World Cup Qualifiers on Saturday.

Nepal was beaten by a large margin in a must-win game to move to the next round. With the victory, the Netherlands secured a position in the Super Six with one game remaining. The West Indies and Zimbabwe joined the Netherlands in the Super Six, but the United States and Nepal were eliminated.

Nepal’s poor batting once again proved to be the cause of their defeat versus the Netherlands. Nepal could not even present a competitive objective to the Netherlands after losing the toss and being called to bat first.

The Netherlands reached the overall goal of 168 runs set by Nepal with only three wickets lost in the first delivery of the 28th over. Max O’Dowd led the Netherlands to victory with 90 runs. Gulshan Jha bowled him on the first delivery of the 27th over.

Bas de Leede was not out on 41 and Teja Nidamanuru was not out on 2 runs.

Sandeep Lamichhane grabbed two wickets for Nepal. Sandeep bowled Bikramjit Singh lbw in the 13th over after he scored 30 runs from 43 balls.

After that, Wesley Barresi was caught out by Deependra Singh Airee in the 15th over. Barresi was out in three runs.

Sandeep bowled all ten overs, scoring 60 runs. Sandeep, who had gone wicketless in the first two games, took wickets in the last two.

Prior to then, Nepal could only muster 167 runs in the 45th over.

Nepal was under constant pressure from the Netherlands from the start. Following the dismissal of opener Aasif Sheikh for zero runs, Nepal’s other opener, Kushal Bhurtel, was also dismissed for 27 runs.

Bhim Sarki contributed 22 runs, while Arif Shaikh returned to the Pavilion with 6 runs. Even Nepal’s innings proved too much for even skipper Rohit. Kushal Malla went out for 12 runs before Rohit was caught for 33.

Dipendra Singh Airee was out for 14 runs, and Gulsan Jha was out for 15 runs, thus Karan KC could only add one run.

Even though Sandeep Lamichhane scored a respectable score of 27 runs for the last wicket, Nepal could not present a competitive target. This is the highest score made by Nepal in the ongoing World Cup qualifiers. Earlier, he had scored 238 runs against the West Indies.

After easily defeating America, Nepal also gave Zimbabwe a target of 291 runs. But against the Netherlands, the Nepali batter was innocent.

Logan van Beek of the Netherlands took the most 4 wickets. He bowled 9.3 overs and cost only 24 runs. While Bas de Leede and Bikramjit Singh took 2 wickets, the remaining 2 wickets went to Clayton Floyd and Aryan Dutt.

The US has been eliminated from this group before the final game.