The Indian men’s cricket team will kickstart its Asian Games campaign against Nepal on Tuesday in the quarterfinals of the cricket tournament.
The Men in Blue are playing the quarterfinals directly due to them being a top-ranked T20I side. Nepal defeated Maldives by 138 runs in their Group A match to qualify for the quarterfinals.
In the match, Nepal scored 212/7 in 20 overs after batting first. Knocks from skipper Rohit Paudel (52 in 27 balls with three fours and three sixes), Kushal Malla (47* in 20 balls, with three fours and three sixes) and Gulsan Jha (35 in 21 balls, with one four and three sixes) were instrumental in Nepal setting up a huge total.
Nazwan Ismail (3/17) was the pick of the bowlers for Maldives.
In the chase of 213, Maldives was bundled out for just 74 runs in 19.4 overs, with Muaviath Ganee (36 in 34 balls with two fours and two sixes) being the lone warrior for Maldives.
Abinash Bohara picked up six wickets for 11 runs in 3.4 overs for Nepal, single-handedly winning the match for Nepal.
The Indian men’s side, making their Asian Games debut, will be looking forward to repeating the heroics of the women’s side, who won a gold by defeating Sri Lanka in the final by 19 runs while defending a small total of 117 runs. It was also the debut of the women’s team in the continental event.
Team India: Ruturaj Gaikwad (captain), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Rahul Tripathi, Tilak Varma, Rinku Singh, Jitesh Sharma (wicket-keeper), Washington Sundar, Shahbaz Ahmed, Ravi Bishnoi, Avesh Khan, Arshdeep Singh, Mukesh Kumar, Shivam Dube, Prabhsimran Singh (wicket-keeper), Akash Deep
Standby players: Yash Thakur, Sai Kishore, Venkatesh Iyer, Deepak Hooda, Sai Sudarsan.
