KATHMANDU, March 15: Three new faces have made it to the final list of the 15-member team declared on Wednesday for the ACC Emerging Nations Cup cricket tournament under the captaincy of Gyanendra Malla.
Md Asif Sheikh, Dilip Nath and Dipesh Shrestha are the new faces to make it to the national squad for the first time. They came as replacement of veterans Basant Regmi and Shakti Gauchan and youth Sompal Kami who were rested for the tournament.
The tournament to feature six teams of Asia is scheduled for March 25 to April 4 in Bangladesh.
Gyanendra, the stand-in-skipper during Nepal's ICC World Cricket League Championship matches against Kenya played on Saturday and Monday, will replace regular captain Paras as the latter decided to take rest. Though Paras was included in the final list of players for Kenya matches, he did not play in any of them since he was recuperating from appendicitis surgery. Sharad Vesawkar has been assigned the role of vice captain.
Bhuwan Karki and Sushan Bhari made their comeback to the national team. Bhuwan was in the list of four reserved players for Kenya matches. Dilip, the wicketkeeper batsman included in national team for the first time, was one among four reserved players for Kenya matches. Meanwhile, 19-year-old Dipesh is the fast bowler of the U-19 national team which played the ICC U-19 World Cup in 2016.
Kushal Bhurtel, Jitendra Kumar Mukhiya, Rajesh Pulami Magar and Sushil Kandel are the reserved players of the squad.
The players were picked by a selection committee headed by ICC's Asia Development Officer Venkatapathy Raju along with national team head coach Jagat Tamatta, Khadka and Malla as members.
Malla, Vesawkar to lead Nepali team in ACC Emerging Nations Cup
The training camp of the team will begin on Sunday.
The tournament will feature eight teams in total including four associate and four Test-playing teams. Nepal, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Afghanistan are the associate teams while India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are the Test teams. However, the Test teams will be eligible to include only four national players.
Nepali squad:
Gyanendra Malla (captain), Sharad Vesawkar (vice captain),
Binod Bhandari, Sagar Pun, Md Arif Sheikh, Mahaboob Alam, Dipendra Singh Airee, Sandeep Lamichhane, Md Asif Sheikh, Avinash Karn, Sunil Dhamala, Bhuwan Karki, Sushan Bhari, Dipesh Shrestha, Dilip Nath
