The government on Wednesday honoured the members of the national women’s cricket team with cash rewards for their second-place finish in the ICC World Cup Qualifying Series for Asia Region.

Each member of the team—including 15 cricketers, coach and physio—were rewarded with Rs 25,000 during a ceremony at the Youth and Sports Ministry. The reward comes six days after Nepal crashed out of the ACC Women’s Asia Cup—a tournament for which they made it after finish second in the Qualifying Series held from October 9-15 in Hong Kong. 

Skipper Rubina Chhetri, her deputy Sita Rana Magar, Nary Thapa, Neera Rajopadhyaya, Karuna Bhandari, Indu Verma, Kajol Shrestha, Sabnam Rai, Roshani Bohora, Saraswati Chaudhary, Rashmi Sharma Chaulagain, Nirmala Shahi and Jyoti Pandey were part of the Nepali team. 

Raju Basnyat was the coach and Manu Lo was the physiotherapist. Nepal had beaten China twice and Hong Kong once in the Qualifying Series to secure their second tournament in one month. Youth and Sports Minister Daljit Sripali and Joint Secretary Choodmani Poudel felicitated the cricketers. 

The women’s team, however, had a forgetful outing in the November 26 to December 4 Asia Cup held in Thailand, losing all their five round robin league games to finish at the bottom of the table. They had crashed to a record low total of 21 against India and the team failed to reach triple figures in all the games. Before the Qualifying Series, Nepal’s last international participation was in the 2014 Asian Games.