The women´s cricket team had lost the opening and quarterfinal matches against Japan last week and crashed out of the tournament.[break]
Hong Kong won the toss and elected to bat first at the Guanggong International Cricket Stadium. Nepali pacemen Amrit Bhattarai and Binod Das showed some brilliance and Hong Kong were at 4/2 in the second over. Bhattarai bowled opener Najeeb Amar in the second ball of the first over and Rahul Vishwakarma caught Jamie Atkinson off Binod Das.
However, opener Roy Lamsam anchored the Hong Kong innings. He struck 47 runs off 61 balls. He hit five boundaries. Lamsam and Waqas Barkat (31 runs) played a 67-run partnership for the fifth wicket. Hong Kong were 115/7 at the completion of the allotted 20 overs.
Bhattarai took the highest three wickets for Nepal, two of them coming in the last over of the innings.
Nepali batsmen failed to chase the modest target of 116 runs and could manage only 85 for nine in 20 overs. Sharad Vesawkar, who made 16 runs off 27 balls, was the highest scorer in the Nepali innings.
Basanta Regmi struck 15 runs while captain Paras Khadka made 13 runs before being run out. Mahesh Chhetri added 10 runs, while the rest of the batsmen could not even reach double figures. Nadeem Ahmed took three wickets.
Nepali skipper Khadka said they had to face an unexpected result as not a single batsman succeeded in anchoring the Nepali innings. "All batsmen failed to anchor the innings when batting in the Guangzhou pitch was a difficult task," said Khadka. However, Khadka said that his team would make a comeback in the next game and try to stay in the tournament.
This was the first Twenty20 match between Nepal and Hong Kong.
Sri Lankan coach of the Nepali team Roy Luke Dias, who is touring Guangzhou in his last tournament as coach of the Nepali team, said that losing the toss turned the match against them.
"We brought Binod (Bhandari) to open as we wanted to win the match. We failed there. Meanwhile, the run out of Paras (Khadka) was the turning point of the game," said Dias.
Nepal will have to defeat the Maldives on Monday to stay in the tournament.
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