Nepal wasted an automatic berth to the next ICC U-19 World Cup after losing their seventh place playoff match to Namibia by 15 runs in the ongoing cricket showpiece in Bangladesh on Thursday.

A victory at Fatullah would have secured Nepal a World Cup spot in New Zealand. The International Cricket Council (ICC) had recently decided to hand the top-ranked non-Test playing team of the tournament a spot in the next World Cup. The loss to Namibia left Nepal’s assistant coach Binod Das disappointed. “We had a great opportunity to secure a place in the next U-19 World Cup, but we spurned it,” Das said after the match.

But the former Nepal international refused to criticise the players. “They have been exceptional. The only problem was their lack of ‘match sense’. If only they had played some good domestic cricket, they would have tackled it properly,” he added.

Nepal had reduced Namibia to 113-5 in 32.5 overs but Michael van Lingen (58) and Francois Rautenbach (39) then put 99 runs to take

the total to 225-9 in the match reduced to 45 overs. Nepal were well placed at 104-1 in 20 overs. But they lost their way thereafter, to be all out for

210 in 44.2 overs. Opener

Sunil Dhamala was the team’s top scorer with 59 runs.

Nepal will now have to go through a regional tournament, from where they can qualify for as champions. A second-place finish will still keep them alive with another opportunity through the global qualifiers. Nepal had qualified for the Bangladesh event by winning the ICC U-19 World Cup Qualifiers in Malaysia last year.

Nepal defeated New Zealand and Ireland to make it to the quarter-finals, finishing runners-up to India in Group ‘D’. A quarter-final loss to Bangladesh was followed by a crushing 122-run defeat at the hands of Pakistan in the ‘fifth place playoff semi-final’.