St Cross Symondians beat Nepal by 20 runs in their 2nd practice match of the European tour. Anil Kumar sah top scored for Nepal with his 56 in an entertaining innings mixed of all guts and ability.
A tall lad with an ability to clear fence although being deceived by some back of the hand slower ones, he got the Nepalese chase going. Other batsmen miserably failed around him with Sharad, Rohit and Dipendra failed to capitalize a relatively good batting condition. Aarif played a handy innings of 34 runs off 24 balls. Standing captain Gynanendra showed little glimpse of shot making with 6 and 4 of successive deliveries. Nepal needs to fix their top order mystery to get good results in the upcoming fixtures.
Earlier,St. Cross skipper won the play of coin and opted to bat first. Nepal was asked to field first in flat and dry track but second ball wicket from Nepal’s premium pace bowler, Sompal Kami, lightened up the visitor. He uprooted Tom Foyle’s (00) stump to provide Nepal early breakthrough. Matt Floyd and Jimmy Adams were batting well before Nepal introduced Basant Regmi in the 5th over to send back Floyd (07). Then, Adams and Felix Organ shared daddy partnership to bring the host right up in the context. Regmi victimised Organ (39) to reduce St. Cross to 117/3 at 15 overs.
Backbone of Cross’s batting lineup, probably most experience player of the match (including both squad in terms of matches played), was batting well and was moving to his century with ease, then come pride of Nepal, Sandeep Lamichhane, to dismiss him. He smashed 72 runs off 48 balls before hitting the ball to Khakurel’s hands. Sompal Kami came back for his second spell to dismiss Brad (00).
Thanks to Tom Scriven and Harry’s cameo at the finishing phase of the innings which took St. Cross to the fight able total of 168 runs on board, losing 6 wickets in inscribed 20 overs. Scriven smashed 23 runs whereas his partner in crime, Harry, scored 11 runs. St. Cross collected 26 runs in last 12 balls. Sompal Kami and Basant Regmi took maximum 2 wickets for visitor while Lamichhane chipped in with a wicket
