Lamichhane snapped by Oval Invincibles in The Hundred
He was the only Nepali player in the draft and one of the 25 overseas players with the base price of £100,000. A file photo of Sandeep Lamichhane during the closed camp training of the national team. Post Photo
Nepali star spinner Sandeep Lamichhane added another feather to his glittering cricketing career after being picked by the Oval Invincibles in The Hundred in the players draft.
This will be the 10th franchise-based cricket competition of the 20-year-old sensation having already played in the Indian Premier League, Big Bash, Caribbean Premier League, Afghanistan Premier League, Bangladesh Premier League, Pakistan Super League, Global T20 Canada, Hong Kong T20 Blitz and Abu Dhabi T10 League.
Lamichhane was signed for £100,000 (around 14.71 million rupees) for the tournament. He was the only Nepali player in the draft and one of the 25 overseas players with the base price of £100,000. The amount surpassed his previous highest earning of $ 70,000 from Barbados Tridents of the Caribbean Premier League earlier this year.
Sunil Narine, Sam Curran, Jason Roy, Sam Billings and Tom Curran among others will be his teammates for the Invincibles. Cricket’s biggest names, with exception of current Indian internationals, cricketers including Steve Smith, Eoin Morgan, Chris Gayle, Mitchell Starc, Shakib Al Hasan, David Warner and Kane Williamson had made themselves available for the draft. West Indies' Gayle and Dwayne Bravo, South Africa bowler Kagiso Rabada, Sri Lanka's Lasith Malinga and Pakistan's Shahid Afridi were among the big names to remain unsold.
Originally from Chitwan, Lamichhane took the world by storm when he became the fifth player in the ICC U-19 World Cup history to take a hat-trick. His stardom rose further when he was picked by then Delhi Daredevils for the Indian Premier League in 2018. After a brief debut season in the IPL, the second stint with the Delhi Capitals followed money-spinning leagues around the world.
The Hundred is a cricket tournament with recently conceptualized format including eight city-based teams from the United Kingdom participating in it. These eight teams are based in Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, Cardiff, Southampton and London, which will have two teams. The tournament was originally envisioned as a Twenty20 tournament but with competitions of Twenty20 format already prevailing, England Cricket Board (ECB) decided to shorten the format to attract new fans.
As per the game format announced by the ECB, there will be 100 balls per innings and a change of ends after ten balls. A bowler can bowl either five or 10 balls and can bowl a maximum of 20 balls per game. Each team were given the liberty to select a maximum of three overseas players.
Sailendra Adhikari is an online reporter for The Kathmandu Post, covering a wide range of issues, including politics, society, sports, arts and entertainment.
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