Lumbini Lions’ journey in the second season felt like a script made in heaven.

The Lions had finished bottom in the inaugural season of the Nepal Premier League as they could manage only one win—against Chitwan Rhinos in their fifth match—in seven matches. But the second season started with a win for the Lions—against the same Chitwan Rhinos on November 20.

After the win over the Rhinos in the second season, Lumbini’s skipper Rohit Kumar Paudel had said that they would do better this time. But the Lions went on to suffer three straight defeats after that—to Karnali Yaks, Kathmandu Gorkhas and Sudurpaschim Royals.

This raised concerns that the Lions would not enter the playoffs as one of the top four teams in the second season as well. But they came roaring back, securing three consecutive victories—over Pokhara Avengers, Biratnagar Kings and Janakpur Bolts—in the remaining league-stage matches, and entered the playoffs as the fourth team.

When the Lions defeated defending champions Janakpur in their last league-stage fixture on December 5 to book a place in the top four, they ended the playoffs dreams of not only Janakpur, but also of Chitwan and Pokhara.

Still, the road to the final was not easy for Lumbini. They had to win two more games to book a place in the final. And they made it happen by defeating Kathmandu by four wickets in the Eliminator on Wednesday, and, without rest, they defeated Biratnagar by 40 runs in Qualifier 2 on Thursday. They thus booked the final match against the mighty Sudurpaschim, who were in the final for the second consecutive season with only one defeat in eight matches.

“We are the underdogs,” Lumbini’s opener D’Arcy Short had said after the win over Biratnagar in Qualifier 2. And with more confidence, Short had stressed, “We will now focus on the final, win it and hold the trophy.”

And when they were preparing to hold the trophy in the presentation ceremony, the Lions’ squad were wearing a special jersey—with ‘Champions’ written on the front, and ‘We believe. We did it’ on the back.

Lions make short work of Royals in final

The final didn’t live up to the billing of the ultimate showdown of the second season of the Nepal Premier League.

The Royals, who had lost the previous season’s final after electing to bat first, decided to again bat first in the final of the second season. “We are not going to repeat the same result in the final this time,” said Sudurpaschim’s skipper Dipendra Singh Airee after the toss on Saturday.

However, the Royals did not capitalise on their decision to bat first. While they managed 184 runs in the final last season, Sudurpaschim were bundled out for a paltry 85 runs in 19.1 overs on Saturday.

The first over of the final match was itself proof that the event was not being taken lightly by either of the teams. The first ball of the match, by Ruben Trumpelmann, got past Ishan Pandey. The second, the Lions made an extreme appeal for an edge when the ball was received cleanly behind the stumps. It took a while for the Lions to accept the decision. The third ball, Pandey came ahead, but the ball hit his body, and when Trumpelmann came to collect the ball, there was a small talk between the two. Pandey then took a run to rotate the strike in the fourth delivery.

Then, when Trumpelmann ran in for the fifth ball, with Binod Bhandari on the strike, he did not throw the ball and kept running ahead. The umpire signalled ‘dead ball’ and when Trumpelmann came back to complete his fifth ball, Bhandari played a stroke. But Bhandari, trying to start the momentum with a scoop to score the first boundary of the match, got caught out in the last ball of the first over.

And then, it was the Lions who got the momentum. Sudurpaschim lost three wickets—Bhandari (0 off 2), Sheldon Jackson (1 off 3) and Aarif Sheikh (6 off 6)—in the powerplay with only 20 runs on the board.

The other three wickets were more of a heartache for the Royals as they all fell consecutively, with Paudel bagging the NPL’s second-ever hat-trick, and the first in a final.

In the fourth, fifth and sixth balls of the 11th over, Paudel had Airee (13 off 20) caught out by Trumpelmann, Dipak Bohara caught out by Sundeep Jora, and Puneet Mehra struck leg before, respectively.

Airee, the player with the highest expectations among the Royals’ squad, opened his account in the ninth delivery with a single. Airee was seen complaining for sledging by Lumbini’s wicketkeeper Niroshan Dickwella in 9.3 overs.

Harmeet Singh and Scott Kuggeleijn scored 10 runs each for the Royals before departing. Pandey, Bhandari’s opening partner for the final, was the highest scorer for the Royals. Pandey was the eighth wicket to fall for Sudurpaschim after contributing 33 off 51.

Alongside Paudel bagging three wickets in the final, Trumpelmann and Sher Malla also picked three each. Tilak Bhandari claimed the remaining wicket.

In turn, the Lions roared from the very beginning of the chase. Compared to 20 runs from Royals’ powerplay, the Lions saw 27 runs on the board in the very first over—thanks to Dinesh Adhikari smashing four sixes in the opening over by Airee.

Adhikari and his opening partner Short made a 50-run partnership in only 21 deliveries. But Short (14 off 13) departed soon after, getting clean bowled by Hemant Dhami in 4.1 overs. Adhikari was on the verge of becoming the fastest player to a fifty in the NPL, but he followed Short two balls later at 42 off 13, which consisted of one four and five sixes.

Niroshan Dickwella then partnered with Paudel to take the team close to the target. With 84 runs on the board, requiring only two more to win, Paudel (16 off 12) tried playing the winning shot, but he was caught brilliantly by Airee in the extra-cover region. Dickwella levelled the score with a single, but Sundeep Jora, while trying the winning run with a scoop shot, got out for a duck in the third ball he faced.

It was Dilip Nath who came in at six to run for a single and win it for the Lions with 11 overs to spare.

Individual accolades

Except for cash prizes, there were three motorcycles and a car waiting for their new owners. The three motorcycles were handed over to Sandeep Lamichhane, Rohit Kumar Paudel and Sher Malla for becoming, among the local players, the highest wicket-taker, highest run-scorer and emerging player, respectively.

“It is my first bike. I am happy,” Malla said after being declared the emerging player. Malla ended the campaign as the joint-highest wicket-taker of the tournament alongside Lamichhane and Abinash Bohara, who had 17 wickets with one less match played.

Similarly, it was again Paudel who was called to receive the keys for the car. Paudel, who is also the national men’s team captain, was declared the player who made the biggest impact in the tournament.

Paudel was one of the happiest faces on the ground after the win for the Lions. He drove the car on the ground with his mother in the back seat, both waving to hundreds of fans who stayed to witness the Lions lift the trophy.

“Car or bike were not on my mind in this tournament,” Paudel said in the post-match conference. “All I wanted was to win this title with my team. And as it happened, I am very happy.”

Meanwhile, Sudurpaschim’s head coach Jagat Tamata accepted that it was not their day. “Our players did their best to bring us to the final,” Tamata said. “We will come back stronger next season.”

The final match on Saturday marked the conclusion of the 27-day event that kicked off on November 27. There were 23 match days where 32 matches were played in total. And with the Lions leaving the stadium with the NPL trophy placed at the front of their team bus, the second season of the ‘Festival of Himalayas’ drew to a close, uniting a country fresh out of a generational revolt.