Raunak’s Century Powers Nepal to Big Win Over Bhutan in U-16 Cricket

Raunak Srivastava scored an amazing century as Nepal crushed Bhutan by 298 runs in the ACC Men’s U-16 East Zone Cup cricket tournament on Tuesday. With this huge win, Nepal has reached the semifinals as the top team from Group A.

Nepal batted first after winning the toss and made a massive total of 358 runs for the loss of 5 wickets in 50 overs. Raunak was the star of the match, scoring 168 runs from 132 balls, including 16 fours and 5 sixes. His brilliant innings was the key to Nepal’s strong score.

After losing two quick wickets for just 17 runs, Raunak built a solid partnership of 91 runs with Shivansha Bajgain, who made 54 runs. Later, he added more runs with Sugam Budhathoki (35 runs) and then made a game-changing partnership of 170 runs with Joy Thapa. Thapa remained not out on 61 runs.

For Bhutan, Sanjay Dorji took 3 wickets, but the other bowlers couldn’t stop Nepal’s strong batting.

In reply, Bhutan struggled from the start and could only score 60 runs in 32.4 overs. One of their batters didn’t come to bat, so the innings ended early. Sujan Dawa was the highest scorer with just 14 runs, and no one else got into double figures.

Nepal’s captain Bipin Prasad Sharma bowled brilliantly, taking 4 wickets for just 7 runs in 10 overs. Sachin Bhatta and Suyog Bhattarai also helped by taking 2 wickets each.

With this, Nepal has now won all four matches in the group stage and is on top of Group A. On the other hand, Bhutan lost all four of their matches and is out of the tournament.

Group A includes Nepal, Bhutan, Singapore, Indonesia, and Japan. Group B has Malaysia, Hong Kong, Maldives, Thailand, and Myanmar.