Nepal’s senior and junior men’s cricket teams were victorious in their respective games on Wednesday. While the senior team defeated Qatar in the quadrangular series in Hong Kong, the U-19 team beat Afghanistan in the final game of the three-match one-day series in Mulpani, Kathmandu.

Returning to international matches after five months, the senior team started their campaign on a high. Nepal chased Qatar’s target of 152 runs with eight wickets and 18 balls in hand.

Of the six bowlers used by skipper Rohit Kumar Paudel, only Dipendra Singh Airee was wicketless. Nandan Yadav, who was making his international T20I debut for Nepal, took a wicket alongside Karan KC, Sompal Kami, Gulshan Kumar Jha and Lalit Narayan Rajbanshi.

Qatar lost their first two wickets in the first powerplay. But their skipper Ikramullah Khan and Shahzaib Jamil steadied the scoreboard for the third wicket. From 26/2 in 4.5 overs, the duo took the team to 73/3 in 11 overs. Jamil departed as the third wicket for 31 off 21 while Khan returned to the pavilion only after crossing the 50-run mark.

It was a defending total for Qatar. Yet, a proper start by Nepal’s top order made the chase easy. Nepal’s first wicket fell in 5.4 overs as Kushal Bhurtel was bowled out by Mujeeb-ur-Rehman. By then, Nepal were already at 81 runs.

Bhurtel added 38 off 19 (4 fours, 3 sixes) while Aasif Sheikh, who departed as the second wicket in 7.6 overs, contributed 33 off 21 (4 sixes); Sheikh was also caught out in the spell of Rehman. Meanwhile, Paudel (37 off 29) and Basir Ahamad (30 off 33) stayed not out and took the team to the win.

Nepal will now face Kuwait and Hong Kong on April 10 and 12, respectively. Kuwait defeated Hong Kong by four wickets in the second game of Wednesday.

Preventing clean sweep

Nepal’s youngsters would have been in pressure had they lost to Afghanistan in the third and final game of the one-day series on Wednesday. But they registered a consolation win and prevented Afghanistan from clean-sweeping the series at Nepal’s home.

Nepal showed improvement in every game. They lost the first game of the series by 130 runs on April 3 while the second game on April 6 saw Afghanistan win by only one run. But on Wednesday, Nepal’s emerging stars turned the tides.

Winning the toss, Afghanistan invited Nepal to bat first. While the top five batters took the team to 172/5 in 34.4 overs, the other half got out adding only 19 runs to the total. Hafeez Zadran bagged four wickets for Afghanistan as they bundled out Nepal at 191 in 44.5 overs.

Afghanistan had posted 300 runs against Nepal in the first game of the series; thus, the target of 192 was not thought to be troublesome for Afghanistan to chase in 300 deliveries.

But Nepali bowlers destroyed Afghanistan’s top order. Dayanand Mandal and Bipin Sharma sent the first two Afghani batters back for a golden duck. By 20 overs, Afghanistan were at 45/6.

Afghanistan were still in the game as they had a few wickets and enough overs left. Nonetheless, rain obstructed the game after Ashok Dhami bowled his first ball of the 21st over.

The umpires dropped the bails, had the stumps removed and called for ground staff to cover the pitch hoping that the game would resume soon. But as the rain continued, the score was adjusted through the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method.

As per DLS, Nepal won the match by 85 runs.

Nepal and Afghanistan were playing the friendly series as preparation for the World Cup Asia Qualifier. Nepal is hosting Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Oman and the UAE from April 13 with the top team qualifying for the 2026 World Cup, which will be hosted jointly by Zimbabwe and Namibia.