Nepal opened their ACC U-19 Premier campaign with a 149 run win against the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at the Bayuemas Oval in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Friday.

Winning the toss, the Nepali side elected to bat putting up 199 runs on the board before losing all their wickets in 49.2 overs. In response, Nepali bowlers didn’t give the UAE batsmen a room to breathe as they were bundled up for mere 50 runs in 20.5 overs.

Wicketkeeper and skipper Raju Rijal scored the highest 62 runs of 84 delivery. Nepal’s opening batsmen still seemed to struggle against the UAE bowling attack when the opposition took the first wicket of Sunil Dhamala with just 3 runs on the board in 1.1 overs.

Skipper Rijal came to the pitch when Nepal was struggling on 57 with four wickets down. He showed great resilience to put runs on the scorecard however the remaining players couldn’t remain for long in the pitch.

For the UAE, Zafri Zafardeen took 3 wickets giving 42 runs with Abdullah Asif and Ahsan Ali Khan pocketing 2 each for their team.

Only two UAE batsmen, Waruna Perera and Zafri Zafardeen were able to register runs in double figures scoring 32 and 12 runs respectively.

Sushil Kandel and Sunil Dhamala decimated the UAE batting line-up taking 4 and 3 wickets each. Kandel claimed the first wicket—of Zafardeen, 12 runs, in 7.4 overs. UAE were sitting calm at 44 runs until wicketkeeper Rijal stumped Ethan Holmes for no run. After Holmes’ wicket, the Nepali side swept the UAE batting order taking 8 wickets for just 6 runs. The last four UAE wickets fell with a constant score of 50 runs after Ahsan Ali Khan became run out in 18.4 overs.

Sushil Kandel was named player of the match.