Nepal smashed records on Wednesday in the men’s T20 match in the 19th Asian Games against Mongolia by scoring a massive 314 runs and the fastest century and fifty.
Nepal set a world record for scoring the most runs in T20 cricket with seven wickets in hand.
Nepal’s Kushal Malla smashed a century in just 34 balls. He remained unbeaten by scoring 137 off 50 balls. Meanwhile, Dipendra Singh Airee scored a 50 with just nine balls.
The team’s skipper Rohit Paudel scored 61 runs off 27 balls.
They also set a record by winning the first match with a huge margin against Mongolia by 273 runs. The Mongolian team was bowled out for just 41 runs in the 14th over of the match.
“Nepal kicked off their Asian Games campaign in spectacular fashion, clinching a resounding victory over Mongolia by a staggering 273 runs. Records tumbled in their wake, marking an unforgettable day for Nepalese cricket,” wrote the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) on their official X account, formerly known as Twitter.
Before Nepal, the Czech Republic had set the record of winning by a huge margin. They achieved this feat during a match against Turkey by winning with 257 runs in 2019.
Earlier, Afghanistan had set a record for making the most runs in a T20 match. The Afghan team scored a massive 278 runs for three wickets in a T20 match against Ireland in February 2019.
Nepal’s batters smashed a number of records in the opening match of the Men’s Asian Games against Mongolia in Hangzhou, in a record 273-run win. Here is a quick look at some of the major records broken by them.
0 – Number of times a team had scored 300 in a men’s T20 innings before this. Nepal’s 314 for 3 against Mongolia in the Asian Games is the first such instance. The highest T20 total before this was 278, scored by Afghanistan against Ireland in 2019 and by Czech Republic against Turkey also in 2019. These are also the highest totals in men’s T20 internationals.
34 – Balls taken by Nepal’s Kushal Malla to reach his hundred, which is the fastest in T20Is. The previous record of 35 balls was jointly held by David Miller, Rohit Sharma, and Czech Republic’s Sudesh Wickramasekara.
9 – Balls taken by Nepal’s Dipendra Singh Airee to hit a fifty. Airee’s innings featured eight sixes and no fours. This is the fastest fifty in all T20s, beating the previous record of 12 balls, which was jointly held by Yuvraj Singh, Chris Gayle, and Hazratullah Zazai. While Yuvraj’s fifty came in a T20I, the other two were scored in T20s.
273 – Nepal’s margin of win against Mongolia. This is the highest margin in terms of runs in all T20s. The previous biggest margin was the Czech Republic’s 257-run win against Turkey in 2019.
520 – Airee’s strike rate in his unbeaten knock of 52 off 10 balls. This is the first instance in T20s when a batter has scored at a 500-plus strike rate in an innings of 10 or more balls. The previous best was Malcolm Waller’s strike rate of 430 in a ten-ball innings against Matabeleland Tuskers in 2016 Zimbabwe’s domestic T20 competition.
26 – Sixes hit by Nepal batters in this match – the most in a T20 international by a team. The previous highest was 22, by Afghanistan against Ireland in Dehradun in 2019 and by West Indies against South Africa in Centurion earlier this year. These are also the most in any T20 match, beating the 23 sixes hit by Balkh Legend batters against Kabul Zwanan in the Afghanistan Premier League in 2018.
19y 206d – Malla’s age on Wednesday, making him the second-youngest batter to score a century in men’s T20Is. The youngest is Gustav Mckeon of France, who scored two centuries before turning 19 in July 2022.
56 – Percentage of Mongolia’s total to have come through extras – 23 of the 41 all out were extras. It is the highest proportion of team runs to have come via extras in a men’s T20I innings (min: five overs bowled). The previous highest was 34.6% for China, who had nine extras during their 26 all-out against Thailand earlier this year.
1 – Centuries in the Asian Games, before Malla’s 137*. Khalid Latif had scored an unbeaten 103 for Pakistan against China in the quarter-final of the men’s competition in 2010, which did not have a T20I or T20 status.