Familiar Nepal’s frailty with the bat resurfaces

All eyes will be on the   men’s national  cricket team of Nepal as they gear up for the opener against hosts Zimbabwe in the ICC World Cup Qualifier in Zimbabwe on June 18th.

Overcoming adversity and challenge,Nepal had made a sensational and phenomenal   turnaround to advance to the  final qualifying round. 

Team Nepal  faces a challenge far greater in Zimbabwe. With the best three teams from each group advancing  to the round of super six,the competition is expected to be intense and grueling.

They are left with no choice but to step up, display grit, passion ,confidence and play to their full potential  to get back into the win column.

They are up against much stronger opponents in the likes of West Indies,Zimbabwe and the Netherlands. Even the United States cannot be underestimated.

Nepal  must continue its  hot streak in Zimbabwe and prove themselves by getting the better of formidable opposition if they hope to make  history.

With the opener against Zimbabwe knocking on  the  door, once again there is a sense of concern over Nepal’s batting frailty.

If  we take into account  the team’s  abysmal batting  performance in the two practice  matches against Scotland and the Netherlands played in South Africa,there is plenty to worry  and become skeptical about their qualifying chances.

 

In both matches Nepal’s batting lineup was badly exposed. They could only manage to score  a paltry 135 and 156 runs against Scotland and the Netherlands respectively.

The batting line-up fell well short.The batters were guilty of throwing away  their wickets cheaply instead of making efforts to settle in. 

They failed individually and collectively  when it came to  anchoring the innings and building partnerships.They must get back to basics. 

Clearly it was  a lack of skills, focus, application, patience,right techniques and  match temperament to  perform in competitive wickets on the part of batters. 

Team Nepal must  go  back to  the drawing  room  to address the batting inconsistency and vulnerability  to turn things around.

The batters  need to  self evaluate their performance. It is all about learning and growing through mistakes.

The young players must learn to perform in stressful and under pressure situations.They have to come together and work out a plan to get things moving in the right direction. 

Although Nepal put in an improved batting performance against the United Arab Emirates in  the first warm-up match,which they lost,in Zimbabwe,consistency and solid batting performance are  keys to batting success on the batting-friendly pitches in Zimbabwe.

The bouncy pitch  tends to favor pacers more than spinners.However, the bowling attack is thin and  lacks pace and pacers. 

Experienced  duo  Sompal Kami and Karan KC and newcomer Gulshan Jha  will have to carry extra workload  and stretch themselves. 

If  spinners are able to  extract turn from the pitch,then that would be a different  ball game. Of course, legbreak googly  star Sanderp Lamichhane  remains Nepal’s trump card.

With three  straight defeats prior to the start of the  competition,the prospects  are  far from rosy and the challenge has become bigger for Nepal.

Head coach Monty Desai was batting coach of   Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates and West Indies.He is the right person to deal with the  chinks in his team’s batting armor.

Here is the bottom line : at the end  of the day   the team as well as individuals have to perform  at  their best to be successful.