Shakti Gauchan continued his best of forms to help Region No 4 Bhairahawa remain unbeaten defeating Region No 5 Nepalgunj here today in the fourth Birendra Memorial National League cricket tournament at the TU Cricket Ground.
Shakti took two wickets as Nepalgunj were bowled out for lowly 128 and hit sparkling unbeaten 55 in 49 balls to claim his third man of the match award. Bhairahawa scored needed runs in 22.1 overs losing only three wickets.
The win will give two-time finalsits Bhairahawa an upper hand while they take on three-time champion Region No 1 Biratnagar in a crucial match on Thursday. If Bhairahawa wins that match, they would make into final while Biratnagar has to wait and see if minnows Nepalgunj defeats hosts Region No 3 Kathmandu.
Shakti played unlike his trademark character today hitting the first ball he faced to a boundary and kept the pace. He walked into the pitch while his team was 21/1 and stayed till the end scoring his second half-century of the tournament with eight fours – first being 62* against Kathmandu three days ago.
Captain Raju Khadka scored unbeaten 22 off 25 balls with two fours and a six while opener Nabin Gurung (14) and Basant Regmi (19) failed to stay long. Rafique Ansari took two wickets for Nepalgunj.
Earlier, Nepalgunj’s lower order failed to collect runs after being invited to bat first. Despite losing opener Rafique Ansari on 10, Nepalgunj’s top order batsmen, Shahid Riza (24), Tajuddin Halwai (21) and Mahesh Chettri (27) got good runs. Their failure to convert good start into big scores hampered Nepalgunj’s innings as the other batsmen failed to get runs off tight bowling spearheaded by Dipesh Khatri.
Dipesh, who gave away only 12 runs in his 8 overs, claimed four wickets. His last three wickets came in space of four balls and he will be looking for his hattrick when he bowls the first delivery on Thursday. Besides Dipesh, Amrit Bhattarai claimed two early wickets while Shakti got two.