Region No 2 (Birgung) became the U-19 national champions defeating Region No 5 (Nepalgunj) by 99 runs in the final of the Wai Wai U-19 National Cricket Tournament at the TU Cricket Ground on Sunday.
Led by captain Akash Singh Pariyar and Kanchan Thapa’s knocks, Birgunj scored 169 in 49 overs before bowling out Nepalgunj for 51 runs in 21.1 overs.
It was second title for Birgunj, who won the inaugural edition in 2000. Interestingly, Birgunj failed to reach final of other three editions.
Nepalgunj were set a revised target of 151 runs in 39 overs after rain interrupted the match but Birgunj ensured the win very early in the innings making it 22/7 in 14th over.
Pacer Jatta Shankar Sarraf bowled his heart out and his performance (3 for 10 runs in 6 overs) wrecked Nepalgunj’s innings to 16/4 in 10th over. Avinash Karn grabbed the other wicket.
Bibek Dali then bowled out Sandeep Shrestha and trapped Bhupendra Thapa to make it 21/6. The last four wickets went to Hasim Ansari, who concluded the match with a figure of 4/6 in 4.2 overs.
Nepalgunj’s top scorers were opener Bidhan Giri (16) and No 10 Navin Shahi (12); they were also the only batsmen to hit boundaries, three in total.
Earlier, Birgunj elected to bat first. Though the opening pair put up 30 runs, it was skipper Akash (40 off 94 balls) and Kanchan (32 off 34) who took Birgunj to a defendable total. Handy contributions came from Hasim (16), Ramji Kumar Kanu (14), Kumar Thapa (11), Dipendra Kumar Raut (11) and Sumit Shrestha (10).
Opening pacer Navin Shahi led the bowlers with three wickets while Sandeep and Subendu Pandey each grabbed two wickets. Nepalgunj’s bowling performance however let them down as they gave away 26 extra runs.