Region No 3 Kathmandu entered the semifinal of the Wai Wai Women’s National Twenty20 Cricket Tournament beating Region No 7 Janakpur by 3 wickets in a nail-biting finish at IOE Ground while Region No 4 Bhairahawa topped the Group A table with third win in a row.
Sarita Magar of Kathmandu was the hero of the victory who single-handedly took Kathmandu past Janakpur’s 72 in the last ball of the match.
At 12th over, Kathmandu were down to 44/6 and match weighed heavily on Janakpur’s side – thanks to Shova Ale’s 3/17 in four overs.
Sarita partnerned Gita Khadka for important 27 runs. Gita contributed just two runs but stayed long enough to take match to the last over.
Needing two runs off last two balls, Gita was run-out and Sarita faced the last ball with two runs required. She finished at 25 not out off 48 balls and victory for Kathmandu.
Earlier, Janakpur scored 72 in 17.5 overs. Geeta Chudal got four among top five batswomen to claim 4/5 and Sarita Magar along with Karuna Bhandari each grabbed a couple of wickets. For Janakpur, Saraswati Chaudhary topscored with 16 while Shova scored 11.
In other match of Group A, Bhairahawa outplayed Region No 2 Birgunj for a huge 142-run victory to go atop the table with three wins in as many matches. Birgunj lost all three.
Bhairahawa won the toss and Khina Thapa elected to bat. It proved a good decision for the captain as Madhu Thapa scored the tournament highest 92 off just 72 balls with 15 boundaries.
She played with such dominance that even with Khina, who scored just 4 off 6 balls, she added 28 runs. With Aksha Gurug (6 off 10), Madhu partnered 33 runs.
But the best partnership of the event was between her and Indu Verma. They added, 105 runs for third wicket in 65 balls breaking records. Madhu was out eight runs short of her century in the 18th over.
Indu (36 not out off 29 balls) and Aarati Koirala (4 off 5) took Bhairahawa to tournament’s highest 174.3 in 20 overs.
In reply, Khina, Bobita Giri and Indu ripped through the Birgunj batting taking three wickets each and bowled out the opponents for just 32 runs in 11 overs. More than half runs came through extras.
Khina finished at 3/6, Bobita 3/10 and Indu 3/8.