ICC Under-17 Asia Cup: 4th day Summary

Tuesday the 18th July 2000 had only two matches on the schedule, both to be played at Karachi. The top notchers given the rest, the young and upcoming teams were involved in the two encounters. Though Malaysia, Singapore and UAE were the associate members of the ICC their teams still required lot of progress.

The match between Singapore and UAE in which Singapore suffered a 5-wicket defeat was an exciting one. Batting first Singapore was only able to mount a score of 115 runs in 34 overs, not even completing their quota of 45 overs. The UAE bowlers being too wayward conceded 30 extras, which helped Singapore to boost up the total.

In reply UAE piled up the required runs in 30 overs for the loss of 5 wickets only. This was on account of an excellent start of 66 runs given to the team by the openers Aamir Hussain (28) and Aamir Shahzad (45).

In the second match a relatively new and inexperienced Saudi Arabia team defeated Malaysia by 82 runs.

The poor bowling - fielding combination of Malaysia allowed Saudia to pile up a big total of 213 runs. Though Saudi Arabia lost 2 early wickets at a total of 10, the subsequent batsmen i.e. Basit Butt (41), Bilal Qureshi (39) Mudassar Farqooq (26) and others helped in raising the total.

Facing a challenging target of 214, Malaysia kept losing the wickets at regular intervals, reaching 95 for 4 in 24 overs. Wickneswaran played the small but adventurous innings of 21 in 21 balls.

The batsmen who followed became the victims of a penetrating spell of bowling by Bilal Qureshi (4 for 27) bringing down Malaysia to 132 all out. Saudi Arabia achieved a convincing victory.