Asian Games 2023: The Men’s Cricket has been played for the first time in the Asian Games 2023 and that too in the T20 International format.
Nepal had done well in this tournament till they faced an experienced side of the men in blue today. India’s first-ever encounter was against the side of Nepal and they registered a win of 23 runs in their opening encounter.
India won the toss and chose to bat first in this encounter. The venue for this game was Pingfeng Campus Cricket Field in Hangzhou.
The men in blue side could post a formidable score of 202 runs from their allotted 20 over quota because of one man who smashed 100 runs in just 49 deliveries.
After scoring tons of runs in the Indian Premier League, Yashaswi Jaiswal has made his name in the red ball format as well where he scored a century on his first game of the red ball format against West Indies in July 2023.
He has also slammed a fifty on that tour of the Caribbean when India played the T20I series and now he has come up with a ton in the Asian Games 2023 against Nepal.
Jaiswal had scored 100 runs from just 49 deliveries which helped India to set a mammoth target of 203 runs.
Now he is the youngest batter to smash a century in the shortest format of the game for the Indian Team. His century knock had seen eight boundaries and seven sixes.
By winning their first match of the Asian Games 2023, Team India is set to be in the semi-finals of this tournament. Nepal gave a brilliant fight and should be applauded.
They fell just 23 runs short of that mammoth score achieved by Team India.
Despite the loss, Nepal should not be too disheartened because they made the experienced Indian bowling unit sweat hard for this win.
On the flat deck and shorter boundaries, the Indian bowlers found it hard to dismiss the batters from Nepal in quick succession.
The Nepal batsmen even smashed more sixes than the Indian Team in this match. India could score only 12 sixes while Nepal batters scored 14 maximums in this match of the Asian Games 2023 season.
After the Indian seam bowlers leaked runs, the spinners of India did a good job of rescuing the team from a crunch situation.
Avesh Khan and Arshdeep Singh went for plenty, Ravi Bishnoi and R Sai Kishore, who played his first T20 International match applied the brakes on the batters of the Nepal side.
Bishnoi took 3 wickets in this match and Kishore could pick up just one scalp in his debut match for India.
Kushal Bhurtel, Kushal Malla, Dipendra Airee, and Sundeep Jora were excellent and they have shown that Nepal has the talented batters to cause an upset against the heavy weights and experienced team like India as well.
However, the spotlight of this game was India’s sensation Yashaswi Jaiswal.
Rinku Singh was another good performer from the men in the blue side in this match of the Asian Games 2023. Rinku is grooming well as the finisher for India in the shortest form of the game and he can be in the fifty overs team later as well.
In this game, Singh smashed 37 runs from 15 deliveries. He even helped India to get more than 200 runs when he smashed 20 runs in the last over of the innings, which was the decisive factor between these two teams in the end.
