The Nepal Cricket Team are well on its way to putting their country on the global cricketing map after defeating the UAE in remarkable fashion, resulting in them securing a place in the World Cup qualifiers later this year in Zimbabwe where they will compete amongst ten teams for a spot at the Cricket World Cup in India.

The win, however, was achieved in bizarre circumstances. The game grew to be extremely close until the 44th over in the second innings, with Nepal needing 42 runs of the last six overs with only four wickets.

The umpires then halted play because of bad light. At the time Nepal were nine runs ahead of the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern target and were subsequently given the win.

On the back of 11 wins in their last 12 ODIs and a gift in the form of bad light at the Tribhuvan University Ground in Kathmandu, Nepal pipped third-place Namibia to get the team a shot at making history for their country.

UAE put up a respectable target of 310, courtesy of fine knocks from Vrittya Aravind and Asif Khan. The Nepal chase started at 1:45 pm local time, while play was called off at 5:37 pm which meant that UAE took nearly 4 hours to bowl the 44 overs. Their dilatory bowling effort seemed to be too costly in the end.

Nepal bounced back after losing two wickets in the first two overs, with solid contributions from Bhim Sarki, Khushal Bhurtel, Aarif Sheikh, and Gulsan Jha who all managed to score half-centuries.

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This drama unfolded in front of a maximum-capacity attendance in Kathmandu, where ICC TV broadcasters claimed that crowds were lining up since 4:30 am. Fans were spotted on terraces and climbing on trees along the periphery to get a glimpse of their country making history.