NPC off the mark, APF share a point

Riding on Sunny Pun’s half century Nepal Police Club (NPC) made their debut in Pepsi One Day National with a 12 runs victory over Kathmandu on Saturday.

Other departmental team Armed Police Force (APF) also playing their first match, did not have such a good start as rain played the spoil sport at Engineering Ground.

Due to the wet out field the match had been reduced to 22 overs. Sent in to bat, Biratnagar were 16/2 in 2.6 overs when it started pouring in and the match had to be abandoned. Both Biratnagar and APF shared a point each.

At the TU Ground, Kirtipur, NPC set a total of 208 runs and bowled Kathmandu out for 195 runs in 48.4 overs. Kathmandu had a slow start. Their progress was hampered when they lost two wickets in succession and were reduced to 49/2 in 14.6 overs.

Puspa Thapa, who earlier had consolidated the middle order with his 37 runs, took two quick wickets—Avay Poudel (3) and Rajesh Pulami (6)—to put NPC on the driving seat.

Rupesh Shrivastav and Rikesh Lama then stitched 58-runs fifth wicket partnership which brought life back to Kathmandu’s chase. Left arm bowler Bhuwan Karki broke the partnership in the 33rd over when he had Shrivastav (22 off 38) trimming Kathmandu down to 126 runs.

Lama’s patient knock—36 runs off 53 balls including four boundaries—came to an end when Thapa caught him off Chandra Saud.

Binod Das then got rid of the dangerman Pramod Basnet (27) while Manjeet Shrestha had Pawan Shrestha run out. Das, Saud and Thapa shared two wickets each for while Manjeet, Karki and Rahul Kumar BK took one each for the Police Club.

Earlier, opener Mahesh Chhetri had scored 42 runs followed by 66-ball 50 runs from Pun and 34 from Thapa in the middle order.

Pun and Naresh Budhayer (18) featured in a 53 runs stand to take the total to 123 before Budhayer was caught and bowled by Pulami in the 29.3 overs.

Thapa then steadied the innings and looked poised to score a huge stroke before he was run out by Suman Uday to shrink NPC to 195/7 in 43.2 overs.

After that, wickets fell in a hurry and apart from Manjeet who added 15 runs, the rest of the batting collapsed as the Police were all out for 207 runs in 47.5 overs. Pulami grabbed three wickets while Basnet and Shrivastav shared two each for Kathmandu.