2018 Asia Cup Qualifiers

Malaysia v Hong Kong Cricket Club (Kinrara Oval)

After a successful pre-tour, the Hong Kong team were eager to put their best foot forward for Asia Cup qualification with a win in their opening match against Malaysia. In both warm up games, Hong Kong were able to defeat the Malaysians by significant margins, instilling a large amount of confidence in the group, but unfortunately that eluded the team today as they went down to hosts Malaysia with the match played at Kinrara Oval in Kuala Lumpur.

On what looked like a very good batting wicket, Hong Kong were sent in to bat first, with Captain Rath and Cameron McAulsen at the top of the order. It was evident that the pitch was playing well by how freely both batsmen were playing their shots – until a slightly elevated late cut off McAulsen was caught in the gully region. This brought Hayat to the crease, and the all too familiar pairing continued at a very good pace, taking the score to 59/1 in the 10^th over, which was when the Malaysians introduced spin into the attack. It quickly became evident that the ball would not spin at all, with both Rath and Nizakat falling in quick succession playing shots in the mindset that there may be a little bit of turn. This theme continued throughout the innings, and Hong Kong’s batsmen seemed unable to formulate a way to score against the straight breaking delivery. Hayat fell for 58 in the 23^rd over, and from then on scoring came to a halt. From 59/3 Hong Kong lost 7 wickets for a meager 103 runs and didn’t up their full allocation of overs in the process.

Malaysia were made to bat for 20 minutes before lunch, and it became obvious that they wanted a good start, with the first delivery being sent back over the bowlers head for 6. A sharp catch by Hayat at slip saw the end of one of the Malaysian openers, while the dangerous Nadeem Ahmed saw a second wicket fall, leaving Malaysia on 18/2 at the lunch interval. The Hong Kong team headed back out with a large amount of confidence, but Malaysian resistance meant that wickets did not fall as regularly as needed, with the score creeping to 107/5 in the 30^th over. Nadeem Ahmed looked threatening throughout, and bowlers did their best from the other end to bowl dots and create pressure – but unfortunately the Malaysians proved too stubborn and showed a fair amount of character to claim victory in the 42^nd over by 3 wickets.

New Hong Kong Captain Anshuman Rath stated after the game “Obviously this is an extremely disappointing result and a very low point for us as a team, but as of right now we are still in this competition and if we play our best cricket and win our remaining games, we still put our best foot forward to qualify for the Asia Cup”.

Hong Kong take on Singapore at Bayuemas Oval tomorrow eager to get their first win on the board of this Asia Cup Qualifying campaign.