Asian Games: India defeated Nepal and made it to the semi-finals, stormy innings of Yashasvi Jaiswal and Rinku Singh.

 

In the first quarter-final of the men's cricket tournament of the Asian Games being played in Hangzhou, India defeated Nepal by 23 runs and made it to the semi-finals. Batting first, the Indian team scored 202/4 in 20 overs, in reply the Nepal team could score only 179/9 after playing the entire overs.

After winning the toss and opting to bat first, Yashasvi Jaiswal along with Rituraj Gaikwad gave a tremendous start to the Indian team. The team achieved the figure of 50 runs in the first four overs itself. Jaiswal also completed his half-century in 22 balls. Indian team completed 100 runs in the 10th over but the team got its first blow in the same over at the score of 103. Captain Ruturaj Gaikwad departed after scoring 25 runs in 23 balls. Tilak Verma scored 2 and Jitesh Sharma, playing his debut match, returned to the pavilion after scoring 5 runs.

However, Jaiswal stood firm and scored the first century of his career and jointly the fourth fastest for India in T20 Internationals in 48 balls. At the same time, this left-handed player also became the youngest batsman from India to score a century in Men's T20 International. He scored 100 runs in 49 balls with the help of eight fours and seven sixes. In the last overs, Rinku Singh (37* runs in 15 balls) along with Shivam Dubey (25*) scored runs quickly and took India's score beyond 200. Deependra Singh Airi took two wickets for Nepal.

Chasing the target, Nepal lost the wicket of Asif Shaikh at the score of 29 in the fourth over, who became the victim of Avesh Khan after scoring 10 runs in 6 balls. The second opener Kushal Bhurtel played a slow innings of 28 runs in 32 balls. Kushal Malla also could not play a big innings and scored 29 runs in 22 balls with the help of two fours and as many sixes. Captain Rohit Paudel was out as the fourth wicket at the score of 77 after scoring 3 runs. Deependra Singh Airi played some tremendous shots and scored 32 runs in 15 balls with the help of four sixes. Sandeep Jora also scored 29 runs in 12 balls. However, no batsman could finish the match and the team had to face defeat. Avesh Khan and Ravi Bishnoi took maximum three wickets each for the Indian team.