Nepal National Cricket team is toiling hard for booking their place in ICC T20 Cricket World Cup next year in Australia. The team had started their close camp since last week with one and only aim of qualifying for the World Cup second time.
Nepal played their first and the only Cricket World Cup back in 2014 in Bangladesh where Nepal defeated Afghanistan and Hong Kong before losing to Bangladesh. Since then, Nepali cricket team is yet to perform best in T20 format. Nepal failed to qualify in any of the mega event after that. However, the story is different this time. With the appointment of new Indian coach Umesh Patwal, who also has the same aim of reaching world cup, the Nepali fans are optimistic this time.
The way to Australia is not that much easy. However, Nepal had already surpassed the first round easily. Nepal won all the matches in Asia (Eastern) Qualifiers and advance to the next round as the winner of the tournament. None of the matches were tough in that competition. Nevertheless, the competition will be tough in the second round. Nepal, along with Singapore and Malaysia had advanced to the second round of the Qualification campaign.
Now, the second round of the Qualifiers will be among Nepal, Malaysia, Singapore, Qatar and Kuwait which is slated from July 20-July 28 in Singapore. UAE is automatically placed in the Round 3 (Global Qualifiers) by ICC as UAE are set to host the Global Qualifiers. Therefore, they are not taking part in the round 2 of the qualifiers.
Nepal will begin their campaign with a match against Qatar on July 23rd followed by a match against Malaysia on 24th. Similarly, the third match will be against Kuwait on 27th before signing of the tournament with a match against the home team, Singapore.
The winner of the tournament (league topper) will advance to the final round (Global Qualifier) which will be hosted by UAE. Total of 14 teams will be participating in this round with top 6 teams booking their tickets to Australia.
Nepali cricket team is doing a lot of progress in ODI matches but seems quite fragile in T20s. The possible cause for this is lack of T20s international matches. Nepal has merely played 20 matches in past years (motioning the first round matches). However, the development of franchises league in the nation had kept the T20 Cricket alive in Nepal.