Malaysia Beat Maldives by 6 Wickets — Pavandeep Singh's Four, Syed Aziz's Fury

Malaysia had lost to Hong Kong by seven runs on DLS and to Saudi Arabia by three wickets with five balls left. Close is a cruel word in a qualifier. On Sunday at Bangi there was nothing close about it at all.

Pavandeep Singh took 4 for 13, Maldives were held to 125 for 9, and Syed Aziz's 57 from 18 balls turned the chase into a sprint. Malaysia won by 6 wickets, with 67 balls remaining.

Maldives started brightly — Mohamed Rishwan and Azyan Farhath had 32 on the board inside four overs — and then Pavandeep Singh took over. He removed Rishwan at the end of the fourth over, Ismail Ali and Shafraz Jaleel within three balls of the sixth, and had Farhath stumped by Nazmus Sakib in the eighth. Maldives were 46 for 4. At the other end, Virandeep Singh's four overs also went for just 13. Between them, the Singhs bowled eight overs for 26 runs and five wickets.

The chase was then over almost before it began. Syed Aziz and Nazmus Sakib put on 54 in 19 balls for the first wicket, and Aziz kept going long after Sakib had gone, his 57 from 18 balls including nine fours and three sixes. Umar Adam bowled him at 113 for 4 in the eighth over, but Sharvin Muniandy finished it with 11 from three balls. Malaysia's net run rate moved from -0.508 to +1.676 in one evening, and on a table this tight that may yet matter a great deal.

Maldives deserve credit for the way they recovered from 46 for 4. Sheraz Iqbal and Ashan Yapa added 51 in 47 balls for the fifth wicket, and Sheraz's 47 from 36 balls carried four sixes — the only real assault on Malaysia's bowling all day. At 113 for 5 in the 18th over, something close to 140 looked possible.

Instead, four wickets fell for five runs, three of them in the last three balls of the 19th over, and 125 was well short on this evidence. Umar Adam's 3 for 43 was a fighting effort under fire, but the rest of the attack went for 84 in 4.5 overs. Maldives began the event by beating China by ten wickets; they now have two defeats in a row, and the margin of this one has cost them on net run rate too.

Malaysia chose to field at the YSD-UKM Cricket Oval. The figures suggest a surface that rewarded straight, tight bowling — Pavandeep and Virandeep both went at 3.25 an over — but punished anything loose: Malaysia scored at more than 14 an over in the chase, and every Maldives bowler went for at least ten an over. It is hard to separate how much of that was the pitch and how much was Syed Aziz.

Pavandeep had been tidy without reward in the defeat to Saudi Arabia, four overs for 20. Here the wickets came, and they came at exactly the right time: the top four in the Maldives order, the last of them Azyan Farhath, the man who had won Maldives their opening game with bat and ball. Four overs, 13 runs, four wickets. Aziz's innings will be remembered for its noise, but it was Pavandeep's quiet work at the start that meant Aziz was chasing 126 rather than 160.

This match didn't have a CricIntel preview — we'll have full analysis for the next encounter.

After three rounds of Qualifier B, Saudi Arabia lead with six points (net run rate +1.563). Hong Kong (+2.657) and Singapore (+0.133) have four, Malaysia (+1.676) and Maldives (-0.842) have two, and China (-4.526) are still without a point.

Malaysia meet Singapore on October 12 in a Southeast Asian derby, while Maldives take on Hong Kong and China face Saudi Arabia.