A four wicket haul from kalemullah set Oman up for a dominant, first victory in the ICC WCL Division-2. Oman’s attack squeezed and then strangled Nepal with tight lines, none of which Nepal could replicate. Oman galloped to victory without any concerns. The Nepali bowling attack barely offered any troubles for them.
Nepal came into this match without any changes from the first match where they defeated Namibia by one wicket in a close encounter. Skipper Paras Khadka lost the toss and was asked to bat first in lethargic conditions. Oman knew the weakness of Nepal that is batting, and exploited it by choosing to chase down the target put up by Nepal.
Nepal lost the first wicket when the score was 10 in the form of Gyanendra Malla (7 off 19) as he was caught behind by Sultan Ahmed. Nepal could not handle the pace of Kalemullah, who went right through the Nepalese batting order and took vital wickets of opener Gyanendra Malla, skipper Paras Khadka (17 off 42), Aarif Sheikh ( 6 off 20) and Rohit Paudel (14 off 42). Sharad Vesawkar and Dipendra Singh Airee tried to salvage the innings with 22 and 20 to their names respectively. Yet again, Nepal’s batting faltered and were in no level of divison-2 as they collapsed to 138 runs all out in 46 over’s. Kalemullah with his gleaming figures of 10-2-28-4 was adjudged the man of the match.
138 looked too small a target to offer any pressure to craft runs to Oman’s Batsman. Despite losing their first wicket at 2 runs, Jatinder Singh and Aqib llyas added 35 runs for second wicket. Sandeep Lamichhane bowled Jatinder for 24 in his first over. Calm and composed Aqib was just enough to get the small target chase. With 5 fours he made 46, which was too much for Nepal, defending a small score. Oman semmed to have no trouble and completed the chase in 35.1 over’s losing only 4 wickets, through the bat of VS Wategaonkar, who also made an unbeaten 37 runs off 71 balls.
For Nepal it was yet again Lamichhane who showed some fight in the match picking up 2 wickets and giving away only 29 runs from 10 over’s. Sompal Kami and Basant Regmi also snapped a wicket each but was not enough to carry on their winning run.
