Nepal crush West Indies to claim historic series win

Nepal claimed a historic series win, their first over a full member, after they humbled former world champions West Indies in the second T20I in Sharjah on Monday (September 29). Having already beaten West Indies in the opening game of the series 48 hours ago, Nepal were clinical with both bat and ball as they crushed their opponents by 90 runs in stunning fashion.

Opting to bat first in search of a rare series win, Nepal got off to a poor start when Akeal Hosein struck in just the second over of the game. Skipper Rohit Paudel was then clean bowled by Hosein in his next over as Nepal found themselves struggling at 16/2 after 4 overs. But Aasif Sheikh led the recovery with a flurry of boundaries to help Nepal finish on a strong note at the end of the powerplay. An unnecessary run out then appeared to peg them back further before a century stand completely flipped the script.

Sundeep Jora joined forces with Sheikh to revive the innings and the latter in particular looked in great touch. Jora then got going with successive boundaries before slamming a six each off Fabian Allen and Navin Bdaisee. It was raining sixes as the Nepal duo put West Indies under tremendous pressure on the back of regular boundaries to eventually bring up their respective fifties. Jora looked completely in the zone as he hammered two successive sixes off Jediah Blades before his hat-trick attempts got thwarted as WI finally broke the century stand.

A couple of more sixes in the penultimate over and a six in the final over of the innings was good enough for Nepal to finish on a strong note. Chasing 174, West Indies found themselves on the backfoot very soon as the first two overs yielded just 3 runs in total. That resulted in a wicket ultimately as Jewel Andrew missed one straight to the stumps and got himself bowled.

The top order succumbed in meek fashion with all three departing for single-digit scores. After 5 overs, WI found themselves reeling at 7/2 before Mohammad Adil Alam ripped through the middle order to cause further damage. While Jason Holder did his bit to break the shackles with successive sixes, the writing was on the wall for West Indies. Kushal Burtel fetched the wickets of Allen and Hosein in the same over to reduce the opposition to 74/7 and from thereon, it was only a matter of time. Alam came back to add one more to his tally and finish with a four-fer before West Indies eventually threw in the towel with almost three overs to spare.

West Indies' total of 83 became the lowest in T20Is for a full-member side against an Associate while Nepal's 90-run win was the biggest margin of victory (by runs) for an Associate team against a full-member.

Brief scores: Nepal 173/6 in 20 overs (Aasif Shiekh 68*, Sundeep Jora 63; Akeal Hosein 2/21) beat West Indies83 in 17.1 overs (Mohammad Ali Alam 4/24, Kushal Bhurtel 3/16) by 90 runs.