West Indies probably took Nepal too lightly by resting most of their first-choice players and the Asian side thumped the two-time T20 champions quite convincingly. On Monday, the two batters Aasif Sheikh and Sundeep Jora stitched a century stand to practically bat the Windies out of the game.
Nepal bullied the big boys from the Caribbean to register their first-ever bilateral series victory over a full-member nation and quite convincingly at that. Yes, the West Indies rested most of their first-choice T20 XI, probably taking the Nepali cricket team too lightly and had to pay for it in a big way as the latter were too good with both bat and ball in two games in a row in Sharjah.
While the first game saw the bowling come to the party, the second game was even more complete for Nepal, with Aasif Sheikh and Sundeep Jora stitching a match-winning century partnership for the fourth wicket. Then Mohammad Aadil Alam picked up four wickets, triggering a massive collapse for the West Indies to seal the deal for Nepal.
It was as much about the West Indies, who, despite not having the first-choice stars, don’t have a ready bench for the highest level, as much it was about the growth of Nepal cricket in the last 2-3 years with a solid core led by Rohit Paudel and the likes of Kushal Malla, Aasif Sheikh, Bhurtel and Lait Rajbanshi coming into their own.
At 43/3 in the seventh over, it seemed like the West Indies would be able to keep a lid on the scoring for Nepal, but Sheikh and Jora played two of the best knocks in recent times on Sharjah, which is generally not the smoothest of wickets, where they complemented each other and laid the platform for a big score.
174 was always going to be a challenging task and losing two wickets for basically nothing set the Windies back further. Jason Holder, the senior statesman, tried his best, but alone he could do only so much. The West Indies bundled out for a paltry 83 as Nepal notched up a commanding win of 90 runs.
The West Indies don’t have much time to come back and try avoiding a whitewash as Nepal look really good to pull one off on Tuesday.