T20 World Cup: Controversial Nepal spinner Sandeep Lamichhane becomes 2nd fastest bowler to achieve special feat

Nepal ended their T20 World Cup journey with their 21-run loss to Bangladesh on Sunday evening in St. Vincent. That win for the Bangladeshi team meant that they took the last spot in the Super-8 stages as the second best team in Group B. 

Controversial former Nepal skipper Sandeep Lamichhane on Sunday made history with the ball. The youngster picked his 100th T20I wicket when he dismissed Jaker Ali for 12. The right-arm spinner ended his night with figures of 2/17 from his 4 overs. 

Sandeep Lamichhane became the 2nd fastest bowler after Rashid Khan to get 100 wickets in the T20I format. For the record, Rashid Khan got to his 100th wicket in his 53rd game, while Lamichhane did it in his 54th game. The young spinner had to wait a while to get his visa after being acquitted by the Nepal Court over his recent case. 

Nepal endures yet another loss to end their T20 World Cup 

There was a lot of excitement and anticipation from the Nepal Cricket fans ahead of the T20 World Cup 2024 tournament. It was genuinely believed that Nepal can do well and cause a few upsets along the way and possibly qualify for the Super-8 stages. 

The tournament for Nepal began with a loss to Netherlands to give Rohit Paudel and his team a bad start. Their next match against Sri Lanka was washed out due to rain giving Nepal their 1st points. 

It was the game against South Africa that showed the true talents of Nepal as they nearly pulled off a win. The last ball run-out of Gulshan Jha ended Nepal’s hopes of making it to the next stage of this edition’s T20 World Cup. 

Speaking at the end of the game, skipper Rohit Paudel said “As a bowling unit we bowled really well. We could have done better with bat. The top order could have batted tighter. Bangladesh bowled really well with the new ball. Losing 4 wickets in the powerplay put us under a lot of pressure. They were always challenging us, they bowled really well in the powerplay. As a batting unit we need to step up, we need to know where to score runs and how to assess conditions”

Bangladesh skipper Najmul Shanto on the other hand was happy when he shared his thoughts on reaching the next phase. “Very happy the way we played this round, hope we will continue our bowling performance, not our batting. We are not scoring much but we believed that we could defend. The way we've bowled, we knew we could take wickets and defend. The fielders have also been good. We have everything, all the fast bowlers have worked really hard”