Region No 3 Kathmandu registered second victory to go atop the points table of the Springwood National T20 Cricket Tournament as Region No 2 Birgunj suffered second successive loss at the TU Ground on June 3.
Kathmandu beat Region No 4 Bhairahawa by 4 wickets chasing 99 while Birgunj lost to Region No 1 Biratnagar by 39 runs.
Old guard Paresh Lohani played a match winning knock scoring 49 not out off 46 balls with four hits to fence and two over it. Hadn’t he anchored the innings, Kathmandu could have fallen into trouble as Sanjay Shrestha (2), Dipendra Chaudhary (7), Paras Khadka (3), and Gyanendra Malla (0) all fell cheaply.
Raju Basnet (10) partnered 29 and Manoj Sood (16) 24 with Paresh to make the lowly run-chase easy.
Bhairahawa captain Shakti Gauchan proved lethal taking 3 for 11 in his four overs while Basant Regmi took 2/10 in a spinner’s day. Manoj Vaishya had a good day behind stumps with two catches and a stumping.
Earlier, Shakti Gauchan elected to bat first, only to lose his openers in space of six balls – Sagar Pun and Manoj’s return means the scorecard reading 2/2. But then a 49-run partnership between typical Shakti (15 off 29) and Basant (31 off 30 with two fours and two sixes) took the team forward.
Akash Gupta played a hasty knock of 22 off 15 and Faizal Khan scored 10 as the team neared three-digit but was eventually bowled out for 99 in 19.4 overs.
Paras led from front with 3/15 while Dipendra and Raju each grabbed two wickets.
Early in the morning, Birgunj suffered it’s second loss as Biratnagar restricted them to 85/9 while chasing 124/5. All this because of leg-spinner Raj Kumar Pradhan, who took 3/12, and seamer Mehboob Alam (2/23).
Birgunj’s top scorer was Akash Singh Pariyar (16 not out) following by Hasim Ansari (15) and Sanjam Regmi (13). They were only batsmen to score in double-digit.
Biratnagar’s heroes were Pushpa Thapa who scored 59 off 51 balls with three fours and as many sixes; and Ajay Rajbanshi (35 off 46).
They waved off the threat pased by Binod Das who grabeed two wickets in the first over to make it 2/2 and run out of Vivek Jha means it was 10/3 in third over. But Pushpa and Ajay partnered 91 runs scoring almost at the rate of six runs per over to help the team.
Binod castled Ajay and finished the match with 3/16.