Nepal, Malaysia, Qatar and Kuwait, all the seeded nations and the group winners in the league round entered the semifinal of the ACC U-19 Cup. The four were also the semifinalists in the last ACC U-19 Cup in Karachi, Pakistan.
In semifinal, Nepal will play Kuwait at TU Ground while Qatar and Malaysia lock horns at Tundikhel.
Kuwait v Hong Kong
Habibullah Iftikar took three wickets and scored unbeaten 58 runs for Kuwait’s two wicket win over Hong Kong in the quarterfinal at the Tundikhel Ground.
Kuwait won the toss and invited Hong Kong to bat first. Hong Kong were restricted to 179/8 in allotted 50 overs. Kuwait lost wickets at regular intervals but Iftikar stick to an end to ensure a nervous two wicket win in 45.1 overs.
Kuwaiti openers Robert Bacon and James Atkinson gave a good but slow start to Hong Kong. They had a century partnership. Robert scored 38 playing 107 balls while James was run out a run short of his half-century. His knock, the best for Hong Kong, was built in 92 balls with six fours.
Courtney Kruger (28 off 44) was the other batsman to stand out whereas the lower order failed to get good runs for the team. Iftikar’s 10 overs cost him 41 runs.
Kuwait didn’t match the start of Hong Kong and lost wickets at regular interval and had no big partnership. Iftikar played 76 balls and hit five boundaries for his 52. He was supported by Mubasshir Khalid (26), Ali Shehzad (25) and Yaser Idres (25).
Despite going down to 166/8 from 159/4, Kuwait won the match to book the semifinal spot against hosts.
Qatar v Bahrain
Qatar overcame the shock defeat by Thailand in the last of the league match to register the easiest win in the quarterfinal against Bahrain. Bahrain were bowled out for 123 in 34.4 overs after they elected to bat first. Qatar reached the target in 29.4 overs.
It was man of the match Tamoor Sajjad who ripped through the Bahrain batting lineup. At one stage, Bahrain were well poised with 94/2 but thenafter lost the last eight wickets adding only 29 runs.
Openers gave Bahrain a steady start adding 40 runs. Once Sundeep Sen (19) and Atif Ashfaq (10) were out in space of a run, Karan Kumar and Gayam DeSilva continued the good work. They both scored 25 runs each and partnered 53 runs.
Qamar Sadiq picked Karan and Zaheer Ibrahim trapped Gayam to give Qatar a rejuvenated energy. Ibrahim got one more. Sajjad, the seventh bowler to be used, bowled tremendously well. He bowled 16 balls, gave away six runs and claimed four wickets.
In reply, Kamran Khan (19) and Sajjad (18) too provided good opening to Qatar adding 46 runs. But the man who really played for the Qatari win was Omar Arshad. He scored unbeaten 42 in 62 balls with seven fours. He partnered Faisal Noor (21 off 34) for 56 runs to take the team to semifinal.
Malaysia v UAE
In the most closely contested match of the day, two-time finalists Malaysia defeated UAE by 12 runs to set semifinal with Qatar.
Malaysia lost captain Suhan Algaratnam in the very first ball of the day after UAE invited them to bat first in the dew-delayed match. However, Faris Almas Lee and Ezrafique Azis overcame the shock adding 50 runs. Esrafiq (30 off 48) was caught behild off Rassim Zubair and after adding two more runs new man Ariffin Ramly was trapped for zero by Syed Md Fawad.
Faris (35 off 72) stayed till his team reach 93 and fell to Wasim Wari. Wasim also claimed Darwin Muralitharan (12) five runs later.
All credit of Malaysian score goes to Manrick Singh, the opening bowler batting at No 7. Manrick scored 43 off 51 balls with nine boundaries to ensure his team gets a defendable total. For UAE, Shoeb Sarwar claimed three wickets while Wasim and Rameez Shehzad took two each.
UAE reply was not that good. They lost first two wickets for 15 runs with both the openers falling to Manrick. From then on, three good partnership took them to 122/4.
Rameez Shehzad (26), Abdul Rahman and Shoeb Sarwar (29) were involved in those partnerships and it looked like UAE would won the match. But from 122/4, Malaysia took four quick wickets to make it 127/8 regenerating the hopes.
Abdul was there with the patient innings. He scored 54 in 98 balls with six fours and a six. But once he fell to Maxwell Stefen making it 148/9, everything fell apart for UAE. The last pair dragged the scored upto 164, but Manrick ended their hopes forcing Syed Md Fawad to edge one to keeper.
It was the fitting end for Manrick, who claimed man of the match award for spearheading Malaysian bowling and batting.