Saudi Arabia's Faheem Afrad, six wickets in his 36 deliveries

Spin’s the thing in this ACC U-16 tournament in Nepal. If you have it, you’ll take wickets; if you can play it, you’ll win.

Saudi Arabia’s Faheem Afrad was one of three spinners used by his captain today, and he took six wickets. Thailand used three spinners too, and they took six wickets between them.

It was Saudi Arabia’s aggressive batsmen however, who set up the win over Thailand by 159 runs.

Thailand didn’t do too much wrong today, they did plenty right but at this level against a Saudi team who are serious about doing well, Thailand’s competitive naivete and inexperience showed.

Some of the Thai bowlers were palpably nervous, some of the fielders jittery and the game just raced away from Thailand. Saudi Arabia didn’t have to do much more than put bat on ball for the runs to come.

Thailand's Aman Dubey had a good battle with Saudi batsman Mohammad Abdullah

Saudi Arabia’s batsmen played out the good balls, and smacked the bad – Mohammad Abdullah the captain playing a classy knock of 70 (67 balls, 14 fours). The outfield was lightning fast, “balls that can be fielded easily at RBSC just flash to the boundary here”, said one Thai player. And having softened up the Thais, Abdullah gave way to Salman Saleem who hit 36 off just 21 deliveries.

At one stage it looked like they’d pass 250 off their 40 overs but 233 was always going to be a challenging score. Thailand started well, but lost wickets just when they looked good and once Faheem Afrad and his big leg-breaks came on – Thailand’s batsmen – in shades of their 2006 ACC U-15 Challenge Cup loss to Bhutan in Bangkok, were befuddled.

Faheem Afrad flights

Faheem took a classic leg-spinner’s hat-trick in his first over, balls flighted above the eye-line, dipping quickly on to leg before turning sharply away to either clip the edge of the bat or the outside of middle and off-stump and would have had a second hat-trick in his third over had a catch been taken at silly point.

The one that got away

Saudi Arabia aren’t totally clued up themselves at this formative stage – they allowed Thailand’s gutsy last-wicket pair to put on 28 quite easily – but on this form they look to be one of the tournament’s strongest teams.

ACC U-16 Elite Cup 2010

Group A
Saudi Arabia v Thailand at Engineering Ground
SAUDI ARABIA WON BY 159 RUNS
Saudi Arabia won the toss and chose to bat
Saudi Arabia: 233 all out off 36 overs (M. Abdullah 76, S.Saleem 36; K.Shah 4-45)
Thailand: 74 all out off 20.4 overs (F.Afrad 6-10)
Man of the Match: Faheem Afrad (Saudi Arabia)
Scorecard

Tournament page

Pictures courtesy Aric Tan

Filed March 9th, 2010