KUWAIT CITY, Feb 6: Tournament favorites Nepal scored a hard fought victory over the spirited challenge put forward by Thailand in the ongoing ACC U-19 women’s championship and assured a berth in the semifinal. Both the teams were eyeing for the victory today so as to decide who would top the table in Pool A.
On a warmer day, surprisingly Thailand decided to bat first after winning the toss and found batting quite tough to some hostile bowling by the Nepalese girls. Sirintra played a valiant knock to score 34 runs which had 3 hits to the fence. Yesterday top scorer Chanida was again in good form to score 26 runs. Anyway, after 25 overs, Thailand managed to score only 86 runs for the loss of 4 wickets.

Nepal were quite cautious in chasing a low total and found scoring very difficult as the Thai girls bowled accurately with well-placed field settings. Indu Varma, a prolific scorer for Nepal again came to their rescue with a gallant 40 unbeaten runs to see Nepal cross Thailand score in the 23 over thanks to Thailand’s poor fielding. Mamata supported Indu with 12 runs. Indu Varma got the Player of the Match award for her batting display.
Malaysia scored their first victory over UAE in another match played at Unity ground at KOC, Ahmadi. Batting first, Malaysia scored 112 runs thanks to some good batting display by Mariana who made 39 runs. Ayesha Naushad Khan & Humaira took 2 wickets each for UAE.
UAE staged a good fight back but the experienced Malaysian girls were quite on top as they skittled the UAE with 90 runs on board. Mariana was rightly declared Player of the Match for her 37 runs in batting and taking 2 wickets giving away 9 runs.
All teams were welcomed by General Manager Ali Haddad accompanied by Ms Maira Katrina Jarlos paying personal attention to the participating countries and left no stone unturned to make their stay as comfortable as possible.