Nepal U19 pulls off an upset against India U19 in the U19 Asia Cup

The Nepal U19 team pulled off a shocking win against the Indian U19 team today in the ACC U19 Asia Cup that is underway in Malaysia. It’s the first time ever that Nepal has managed to secure a victory over India at any level of professional cricket. They had suffered a loss at the hands of Bangladesh in their first game of the ongoing Asia Cup and was in a desperate situation against India. Another loss here would have dented their semi-final hopes.

But they will have to thank their captain Dipendra Singh Airee who not only propelled them to a respectable total first with a wonderfully paced knock of 88 during which he faced 101 deliveries and struck 6 boundaries and 2 sixes, but also made a huge impact with the ball with a four-fer in the second innings of the game to ensure the Indian team was not able to complete the chase.

Apart from Airee, nobody else made any significant contribution from Nepal’s side. Jitendra Singh Thakuri scored a scratchy 36 and Pawan Sarraf and Shahab Alam chipped in with a couple of wickets each, but it was more of an Airee show than anything else.

Rana and Sharma fought

The Indian batters didn’t show enough application during the chase. Nobody, apart from the captain Himanshu Rana who scored 46 and vice-captain Abhishek Sharma who added 27 to the total, showed the willingness to guts it out against a much disciplined Nepal bowling line-up.

Historical result for Nepal

Nobody was giving Nepal a chance against a much stronger India simply because of the quality of the players that Rahul Dravid‘s team possesses and also because of the experience that their players had been playing overseas and in the first-class circuit back home.

It was not too long ago that India had thumped Malaysia by a huge margin of 202 runs in the U19 Asia Cup opener. They were the firm favourites to do the same against Nepal too, but Airee, almost single-handedly, wrote the script of what turned out to be a historical result for Nepal.

Brief Scores:

Nepal- 185/8 (Dipendra Singh 88, Jitendra Thakuri 36; Aditya Thakare 2/33, Abhishek Sharma 2/38

India- 166 all out (Himanshu Rana 46, Abhishek Sharma 27, Dipendra Singh 4/39, Shahab Alam 2/11)