Allrounder Rohit Kumar Paudel earned first call up in the senior national team on Thursday as Nepal announced the final 14-member squad for the ICC World Cricket League Division 2 scheduled for February 8-15 in Namibia.

Paras Khadka will the squad with Gyanendra Malla as his deputy. Others in the team include Shakti Gauchan, Basant Regmi, Sharad Vesawkar, Sompal Kami, Karan KC, Arif Sheikh, Sandeep Lamichhane, Dipendra Singh Airee, Dilip Nath, Lalit Singh Bhandari and Anil Kumar Sah.

Sunil Dhamala, Lalit Narayan Rajbanshi, Siddhant Lohani and Kishor Mahato were kept as reserve players. The squad was finalised by the selection committee headed by ICC Representative Aminul Islam, Nepal head coach Jagat Tamatta and skipper Khadka.

The Division 2, comprising of six teams, sends top two nations for March’s ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifiers in Zimbabwe. The 10-team World Cup Qualifiers, from where the two teams make it to the 2019 World Cup in England, could be a huge platform for Nepali. It could be a far cry to make it to the World Cup finals considering presence of the likes of settled Test teams West Indies and Zimbabwe along with the new members Afghanistan and Ireland. But making it to the Qualifiers itself provides the three highest-placed Associate nations the One-Day International status until 2022. It also opens up doors for Associates to compete in the Intercontinental Cup—a four-day cricket tournament between top Associates—and the World Cricket League Championship (WCLC), a 50-over home and away tournament.

Apart from Nepal and hosts Namibia, other teams in the Division two include United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Canada and Oman. The Nepali team is leaving for the UAE on Saturday to fine tune their preparations where they will play three practice match against the local side before embarking for Namibia on February 4.

ICC representatives set for Nepal visit

International Cricket Council (ICC) on Thursday announced that its representatives will visit Nepal at the weekend to take stalk of progress made towards the reinstatement of ICC membership.

Cricket Association of Nepal (CA), cricket governing body of the country, has been under suspension since April 25, 2016 in the pretext of unfair elections and government interference. To revive the membership, ICC had formed an eight-member Nepal Advisory Group (NAG) which was tasked to review the constitution and prepare an amendment draft for fresh elections.

ICC said in the statement that the objective of the visit, led by ICC Deputy Chairman Imran Khwaja, is to agree on the final steps to getting Nepal’s suspension lifted and reinstated into membership of the ICC. “This involves, amongst other things, the adoption of an updated constitution which all parties agree is needed to lay a solid foundation for the good governance of the sport in Nepal,” said ICC.

“Over the last twelve months, the ICC has worked closely with the NAG which comprises representatives of CAN, the Nepal Government and the broader cricket community, to draft a new constitution,” added the ICC in the statement. “This was one of a number of reinstatement conditions that the ICC set CAN in May 2016 that must be met before reinstatement is considered. A revised version of this constitution was adopted by CAN in August 2017 however this contained significant changes to what had been previously agreed by the NAG and the ICC, meaning it did not fulfil the conditions set by the ICC Board.” The ICC delegation is set for a NAG meeting on Sunday, one of its board member confirmed on Thursday. (PR)