Cricket: Bahrain down hosts Malaysia to win Quadrangular Series; Qatar finish third ahead of Singapore

 

By Armstrong Vaz

Doha, Qatar: Bahrain helped by the batting heroics of Sohail Ahmed clinched the Malaysia Quadrangular Series defeating hosts Malaysia by six wickets in the final of the T20 tournament at Bayuemas Oval, Kuala Lumpur, on Friday while Qatar finished third ahead of Singapore.

In the four-team event final match, Bahrain’s Ahmed kept his cool in the final over of the innings to score 12 runs and give his team the title, finishing off the contest in fourth delivery of the 20^th over much to the delight of his team mates.

Bahrain reached the winning target losing four wickets with top scorer Ahmed (66) holding the innings together and guiding them to the finish.

Ahmed’s 66 came off 44 balls and contained four hits over the fence and three boundaries.

Chasing 154 for a win, Bahraini suffered two early blows losing two wickets with only 37 runs on the board. However, opener Prashant Kurup and Ahmed added 57 for the third wicket to steady the innings and also keep up to the scoring rate.

With Kurup falling for his individual 40 and at the team score reading at 94, Ahmed and three-down batsman Haider Ali added 50 for the fourth wicket to the take them closer to the target, with Ali dismissed off the last ball of the 19th over.

Needing 11 runs in the final over bowled by Rizwan Haider, Ahmed struck one six and one four to get them to the victory target.

Rizwan Haider, Fitri Sham, Muhammad Wafiq Zarbani and Virandeep Singh bagged one wicket each in the Bahrain innings.

Earlier, Malaysia who were asked to bat first by Bahrain managed to scored 153 for the loss of nine wickets.

Malaysia total revolved around contributions from Zubaidi Zulkifle (34), Virandeep Singh (31), Syed Aziz (25), Khizar Hayat Durrani (20) and Aslam Khan Malik (18).

Sarfraz Ali turned out to be most successful bowler for Bahrain capturing four wickets for 27 runs while Imran Javed bagged two wickets for 25 runs. Muhammad Rizwan Butt and Waseeq Ahmed claimed one wicket apiece.

Meanwhile, Qatar won the rain affected third place match against Singapore by nine wickets with 24 balls remaining under the DLS method.

Chasing 165 for a win in 18 overs Qatar reached the target losing just the wicket of Kamran Khan (36) who along Imal Liyanage put on 62 runs in 4.5 overs for the opening wicket. Khan’s 19 ball knock contained five boundaries and two sixes.

From there on, Liyange and captain Mohammed Rizlan took over to guide them past the target without any damage.

Liyange notched his half century, laced with eight hits to the fence and came off 41 balls, Rizlan was the more enterprising of the pair taking just 25 balls to race to his unbeaten 72 runs which contained eight sixes and two hits to the fence, with Qatar reaching the target off the final ball of the 14^th over.

Janak Prakash picked up the only wicket to fall in the Qatar innings.

Earlier, put into bat Singapore made 164 for 6 in the reduced 18-over match.

Manpreet Singh top scored with 71 runs while Aman Desai tuned out to be significant contributor to the Singapore total with 57       runs.

Wicket keeper batsman 18-year-old Sidhant Srikanth made ten runs, he along with Qatar 25-year-old Yousuf Ali, were the two debutants in the match

Ikramullah Khan was the most successful bowler for Qatar bagging three wickets while Gayan Munaweera took two and Mohammed Nadeem one wicket.