The UAE lost their final ICC High Performance Programme (HPP) practice match to Nepal by 31 runs last night, but stand-in captain Rohan Mustafa urged the fans not to read too much into the result.
At Sharjah Cricket Stadium, the UAE were without five of their main players – regular captain Khurram Khan, Vikrant Shetty, Swapnil Patil, Ahmed Raza and Amjad Ali – the hosts were never in contention after losing four quick wickets for just 30 runs in six overs.
They were bowled out for 118 in the 20th over chasing 150 runs, with Fayyaz Ahmed, who is not a part of the team that travels to Bangladesh tomorrow for the ICC World T20 Cup, top-scoring with 52 off 40 balls, including seven fours and one six.
Earlier, Nepal looked set for a much bigger total than their eventual 149-8 after Gyanendra Malla (52, 38b, 5×4, 1×6) and Paras Khadka (31, 28b, 2×4) added 64 runs for the third wicket.
But from 100-2 in the 12th over, they could only manage 49 runs in the last eight overs as four batsmen were run out trying to up the scoring rate even further.
And Mustafa, who is the vicecaptain of the national side, said: “Obviously, we are disappointed because we wanted to win the match. But this does not dampen the spirit of the team at all and we are looking forward to our trip to Bangladesh with confidence and excitement.
“Today being Friday, quite a few of our top players were playing domestic matches. And we have played so much cricket over the last few days that the boys are definitely tired.
“Coach Aaqib (Javed) says I am the fittest player in the squad and even I could feel the effect of playing four 50-over matches in one week.
“I did not use Kami (Kamran Shahzad) and Manjula (Guruge), who are our strike bowlers during the death because they are tired and we want them to be fresh and ready when we reach Bangladesh.
“Nepal played well, but they are not in our group, so we decided to take it easy. But these practice games have been of great help. We beat Hong Kong and Netherlands, and that was good for the morale of the team. ”
On the match, Mustafa added: “We thought 150 was reachable, but we lost quick wickets at the start and that really upset all our plans. We were hoping that the top threefour batsmen would stay till the 12th over, and then we had players who could have accelerated in the end.”
The UAE are in Group B of the opening round which features eight countries, including six qualifiers and Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.
The top two teams will advance to join the eight top Test playing nations in the second stage of the ICC World T20 Cup.
UAE’s first match is against Netherlands on March 17.
