Canada Beat Nepal by 24 Runs — Yuvraaj Samra's Hundred Returns the Favour at Al Amerat

Cricket rarely hands out symmetry this neat. On October 11 at Al Amerat, Nepal beat Canada by 24 runs. On October 17, on the same ground, in Canada's final match of the League 2 cycle, Canada beat Nepal by 24 runs. In between, a side that had arrived in Oman on a run of five straight defeats has now won two in a row, and the second of them was built around an opener who batted 117 balls and gave the innings a spine.

Canada 256 (50 overs). Nepal 232 (46 overs). Canada won by 24 runs. Yuvraaj Samra made 105 with eleven fours and four sixes and was Player of the Match. Nepal had their own long innings, Arjun Kumal's 87, and for most of the chase the game was close. It was decided in the last twelve overs, when Nepal lost their last six wickets for 57 after reaching 175 for 4, the last three of them for a single run.

Canada chose to bat and the openers made it count. Samra and Aaron Johnson had 50 up in 7.4 overs and 62 without loss at the end of the first powerplay, and their stand was worth 72 when Rajbanshi bowled Johnson for 36 in the 14th over. Samit Gohel made 17 before Rohit Paudel trapped him lbw, 105 for 2 in the 25th, and then came the partnership that won the match: Samra and Harsh Thaker added 88 for the third wicket. Thaker's 34 took 57 balls, and that was the right kind of innings. He held one end while Samra, who was 89 at the second drinks break, moved to a hundred.

At 219 for 3 in the 44th over, Canada were looking at something near 280. They did not get there. From that point they lost seven wickets for 37 in a little over six overs, with Hamza Tariq's 30 from 26 the only real resistance, and only 65 came from the final ten overs. Two days earlier against Oman, Canada had also made 256 and won comfortably. This time the same total was enough, but only just.

Nepal's chase had a clear shape: Arjun Kumal at one end, a series of partners at the other. Aasif Sheikh made 20 from 21 before Kaleem Sana had him caught behind at 37 in the seventh over. Ishan Pandey (21), Paudel (18) and Basir Ahamad (6) each stayed a while and then left, and at 131 for 4 in the 30th over the asking rate had started to climb. Dipendra Singh Airee's 27 from 32 brought it back under control. He and Kumal added 44 for the fifth wicket, and when they reached 175 for 4 in the 38th over Nepal needed 82 from just over 12 overs with six wickets in hand.

Then Sukhjinder Singh had Airee caught by Kaleem Sana, and three overs later Kaleem Sana had Kumal caught for 87, made from 112 balls with only four fours. That was the innings Nepal needed from somebody, but it came at a rate that left the late order too much to do. Gulsan Jha, who had hit 48 against Canada on October 11, made 21 before he was run out; Karan KC finished 17 not out; and from 231 for 7 Nepal lost Nandan Yadav, Lamichhane (run out) and Rajbanshi in the space of five balls. The lesson is a familiar one in 50-over chases: a long innings at the top only wins the match if someone finds a faster gear around it.

Nepal's bowlers deserve better than the result. Rajbanshi's 10-2-39-4 and Lamichhane's 10-1-49-3 pulled Canada back from 219 for 3, and between them they took seven of the ten wickets.

Samra's hundred came in phases. He was 23 when the opening stand reached 50, quick early while the field was up. In the middle he slowed and took his time: 50 came off 73 balls with seven fours and a six. Then, with Thaker holding the other end, he opened up again, and the second fifty took only 41 balls. He reached 100 off 114 balls with ten fours and four sixes and was out three balls later, caught off Airee at 219. Every big Canadian partnership in this match had Samra in it. No other Canada batter passed 36.

We made Nepal favourites on form, and we were wrong. We wrote that Al Amerat "could suit Lamichhane and Nepal's spinners", and that part held: Rajbanshi and Lamichhane took seven wickets between them. But we said Canada needed their senior players, naming Navneet Dhaliwal, Shreyas Movva and Saad Bin Zafar, to deliver, and none of the three played. Canada's match-winner was an opener we did not mention. We also framed this as Canada trying to end a five-match losing run; that run had already ended against Oman two days earlier, which our preview, written before that game, could not account for.

Canada's League 2 cycle is complete. The win takes them to 29 points from 36 matches, one ahead of Nepal, who stay on 28 and still have matches to play. Nepal play Oman at Al Amerat on October 19, the last game of this tri-series, and Oman need a win to strengthen their claim on fourth place. For Canada, two wins in their last two matches is a better way to finish a cycle than the five-match losing run they arrived with.