Maldives U19 finished the ACC U19 Challenge in fourth place after failing to overturn China’s 106 runs in the third place play-off in Bangkok today.
China won the toss and made 106 runs in 34.5 overs. Once again all Maldivian bowlers stuck to their task. Mohamed Mabrook bowled 6 overs and took 3 wickets for 19 runs, while Shafee, and Sunan took 2 wickets each. Chasing a low score, Maldives batsmen failed to make headway with only Zaid, Rishwan and Leem making it to double figures. Zaid played cautiously at the top of the order making 20 runs. Rishwan made a quickfire 22 runs from 20 balls but was bowled by Song Yangyang. Leem and Rizan provided some resistance down the order, with Leem making 18 runs, while Rizan stuck in long for 8 runs from 42. However, they were bowled out in the 31st over with just 6 runs remaining between them and a third place finish.The only bright spot for Maldives was Mohamed Shafee who was adjudged the tournament’s best bowler.
Maldives has had mixed results in the tournament, with batting being their main downfall. After having won the opening game by 9 wickets against Bhutan, they went on to lose to Oman by 68 runs. Oman struggled in their batting and was 46 runs for 7 wickets at one stage. However, the Maldivian youngsters could not finish off the good work they began.
The Myanmar game was the only match where the batsmen shined, scoring 195 runs, with 52 runs for Rishwan and 45 runs for Zaid. Maldives won the match by 70 runs to secure a semi-final berth against Singapore. The eventual tournament champions made it easy work out of Maldives beating them by 9 wickets. Once again the young batsmen could only score 54 runs, hardly suited for this stage of a tournament. While the batsmen struggled, the bowlers had a very good tournament with Mohamed Shafee leading the pack. Debutant Sunan Ali bowled brilliantly in the opening match taking 6 wicktes, while pace bowlers Leem Shafeeg and Mabrook were amongst the wickets in all matches.
