Kuwait Beat Mongolia by 10 Wickets — Mohammed Aslam's Five for 19, Then a Chase Done in 21 Balls

There are matches that are contests, and there are matches that are measurements — of how far one team has come, and how far another still has to go. This was the second kind. Kuwait chose to field, bowled Mongolia out for 42 in 14.5 overs, and needed only 21 balls to get the runs. The whole match took 18.2 overs.

It would be easy to write only about the gap. But Mongolia were playing their first match of this qualifier, and Gandemberel Ganbold's 21 from 32 balls, with two fours and a six, was an innings of real resistance in difficult company. Kuwait were simply too good. Kuwait won by 10 wickets, with 99 balls remaining.

Kuwait used six bowlers and every one of them conceded less than five an over. Adnan Idrees bowled three overs for five runs, two of them maidens, and took a wicket. Shahrukh Quddus's two overs cost four, with a maiden of his own. Yasin Patel took the first wicket, bowling Uugan-Erdene Batjargal in the second over. Then Mohammed Aslam took five, and Meet Bhavsar, in 1.5 overs, took the last three wickets for four runs. Three maidens were bowled in a 14.5-over innings.

The fielding matched the bowling. Clinto Anto had a hand in three dismissals behind the stumps — two stumpings and a catch — and Ravija Sandaruwan held the catch that ended Ganbold's innings. Then Sandaruwan went out and made 30 from 14 balls, with three fours and two sixes, while Idrees hit three fours in an unbeaten 13 from seven. Forty-three runs came at more than 12 an over, and not a single extra was needed to get them. Two days, two wins: by 58 runs against Qatar, and now by 10 wickets.

The numbers are hard ones. Mongolia were 22 for 5 after nine overs, four of their batters made ducks, and only Ganbold reached double figures. He made exactly half his team's total — 21 of 42 — and he did it by batting 32 balls, longer than anyone else in the innings, and by being willing to hit a six against an attack that gave away almost nothing. Namsrai Bat-yalalt's unbeaten 5 from 12 balls was its own small act of persistence as the wickets fell around him.

The ball was a harder story to tell: Kuwait's openers scored at will in 3.3 overs, and Tumursukh Turmunkh's 1.3 overs cost 21. But Mongolia's bowlers will face batting line-ups in this event that are not Kuwait's, and a first match against a side that had made 199 the day before is a hard place to start a campaign. There are five games still to come.

It is difficult to read much about the pitch from a match like this. Mongolia's 42 suggests the bowlers got something from it, and seven of the ten wickets were bowled, lbw or stumped — dismissals that come from bowlers attacking the stumps and batters being beaten. But Kuwait's 43 for 0 came at 12.29 an over, with two sixes, which suggests the surface held no terrors for batters set on attacking. The scores say more about the gap between the teams than about the ground.

Five wickets for 19 runs in four overs, and the variety of them tells you something. One caught, by Sandaruwan, to remove Ganbold, Mongolia's best batter. One lbw, Bilegdemberel Munkhdelger. One stumped by Anto, Sodbileg Gantulga. One caught by Anto, Luwsanzundui Erdenebulgan. One bowled, Temuulen Amarmend. Five different batters, dismissed four different ways.

Against Qatar on the opening day, Aslam had made 13 from nine balls and taken 2 for 28 — a useful contribution in a big win, but one that sat behind other names. Here the match was his. A five-wicket haul in a T20 is rare enough at any level, and this one turned the match into a formality. Mongolia's innings was a door that kept closing, and Aslam was the one closing it.

CricIntel did not publish a preview for this match, so there is no prediction to review.

Qualifier A is a seven-team single round robin running from October 5 to 14 in Malaysia. After six matches, Bahrain and Kuwait have won both their games. Bhutan and Qatar have one win and one defeat each. Thailand have lost two, and Myanmar and Mongolia have lost one each.

Kuwait and Bahrain are the two unbeaten sides, and both have won heavily on October 6 — Bahrain by 66 runs against Bhutan, Kuwait by 10 wickets here. Mongolia have their first match behind them and five more to come, each one a chance to build on what Ganbold showed.