Nepal and Zimbabwe are going head to head in the opening match of the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier 2023. The match against the favorites Zimbabwe will be very tough for the Nepalese side. However, the Rhinos are expected to give a tough fight to the home side.
The match between Nepal and Zimbabwe will be played at Harare Sports Club Ground and will start from 12:45 pm Nepali time.
Both the teams consists of series of match winners in their team. The all-round performance from Ryan Burl, in-form Clive Madane, experienced duo Ervine Craig and Sikandar Raza and many more. They all are match winners in the home side.
Similarly, the opener duo Kushal Bhurtel and Aasif Sheikh, midder order duo Rohit Poudel and Aarif Sheikh, spinner duo Sandeep Lamichhane and Lalit Rajbanshi are the match winners including the pacers duo Sompal and Karan along with rising Gulshan Jha.
We have picked up one players from each team based on their recent performance and possible impact in the entire tournament.
Sikandar Raza
Zimbabawe will all rely on their star and inform allrounder Sikandar Raza who has been brilliant in recent years. He was also the part of Nepal T20 league and also won two man of the match in recently concluded Indian premier League.
In the last two warm-up matches played, the Zimbabwean all-rounder was on fire as he batted with strike rate of 160 plus in both matches. In the first match, Raza smashed 110 in just 67 deliveries against Oman before retiring himself out. Similalry in the second match, he made quick fire 44 off just 25 deliveries against Scotland.
With the ball, Raza picked up 3 wickets aganist Oman and one wickett in the second match where he couldn’t even finish his second over.
Sandeep Lamichhane
There are many match winners in Nepal. In past 14/15 ODI matches, number of match winners had arised in Nepal. Among all those, the young leg-spinner Sandeep Lamichhane remains threat for opponent batters. Recently, Lamichhane has work on his batting as well. So, he can be the threat to the opposition bowlers as well.
Currently, Sandeep Lamichhane is on a run of consecutive ODI wickets and he has done that in straight 33 matches. Last month at TU Cricket Groound, Lamichhane broke the world record of Fastest to 100 ODI wickets set by Rashid Khan.
Sandeep didn’t featured in first three practice matches of Nepal against Scotland, Netherlands and the UAE. He played against Oman in Nepal’s final warm-up match and grabbed three wickets. However, he was quite expensive. In the chase, Lamichhane lofted it over bowlers head to finish the match with a six.
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