Winning the toss and electing to bat first at Bayuemas Oval in Kuala Lumpur, Nepal scored a robust 259 for nine in 50 overs, with the innings mostly built around Bhuwan Karki’s magnificinet 63-ball 83, including eight fours and three sixes.[break]
In reply, Bahrain struggled for runs and the whole innings crashed for 63 runs in 21 overs, with Karn doing the damage. The bowler took four wickets in his second over-- first removed opener Ikram Nadeem (1), with his second ball of third over of the match and went on to dismiss Adeel Nasir (6), J Anandhakrishan (0) and Ubaid Minhas (0) with his fourth, fifth and sixth deliveries. Bhuwan Karki and RP Singh took one wicket apiece.
Of Karn’s eight victims, four were lbw out and the remaining four were bowled out. With Karn bowling with a lot of venom, Bahrain batsmen could not regroup anytime throughout, losing top seven wickets in just 6.5 overs with only 12 runs on board. Karn was adjudged man of the match for his extraordinary spell.
It was a 34-run eighth wicket stand between A Krisha (22 off 47 balls) and Lalith Lal (17 off 23 balls) that did some repairing of the dilapidated Bahrain innings. Krisha and Lal hit four boundaries each. Besides no other Bahrain batsmen made it to the double figures. Five of them were duck out.
Earlier in the Nepal innings, apart from Karki, B Thapa made 44 off 92 balls with three boundaries. N Thapa (25) Amrit Shrestha (22), Nishchal Pandey (16) P Shrestha (13) and Harishankar (10) were the other Nepal batsmen who contributed in double digits. Nepal got 32 as extras.
A day earlier, Nepal thrashed Qatar by nine wickets. Nepal won its opening match against Kuwait by 84 runs. Nepal will take on host Malaysia on Wednesday.
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