He Left the Field on 13 and Came Back to Make a Hundred: Babar Hayat's 117* Beats Nepal — and Sends Hong Kong Into the Harder Semi-Final

There is a particular kind of cricketing silence that settles over a ground when a batter walks off injured. It is not the silence of a wicket — that has noise attached to it, a bowler's arms, a fielder's sprint. It is quieter and more uncertain than that, because nobody in the ground knows whether the man leaving will come back, or in what condition, or whether it matters.

Babar Hayat walked off the Bayuemas Oval on 13 not out with Hong Kong 52 for 2. By the time he walked back, they were 80 for 5 and the innings had the shape of a total in the 180s at best. He batted for the remaining thirty-one overs and did not get out. One hundred and seventeen from 126 balls, seven fours, seven sixes — and, more decisively than any of that, an unbroken 128 for the eighth wicket with Ehsan Khan, whose contribution to it was 35 from 46 balls and the refusal to do anything foolish.

Nepal, needing 262, went past 200 with four wickets standing and Ishan Pandey playing the innings of his young life. They lost by 15. And the tournament arithmetic then performed its own small cruelty: Nepal, beaten, finished top of Group A on net run rate and drew Oman in the semi-final. Hong Kong, victorious, finished second and drew an unbeaten U.A.E.

For thirty overs this was Nepal's match, and it was Sandeep Lamichhane who made it so. He bowled his ten straight through the middle for 44 and took four: Kalhan Challu bowled, Kinchit Shah stumped second ball, captain Yasim Murtaza caught at short cover, Aizaz Khan lbw. Around him, Sher Malla — playing his first List A match — bowled ten overs for 27 and removed both openers and then Shahid Wasif, stumped by Aasif Sheikh for 45. Ten overs, 2.70 an over, three wickets, on debut. It is difficult to imagine a more composed introduction to the format.

Hong Kong were 133 for 7 in the thirty-first over. Nepal had bowled thirty-one overs and conceded 133; they needed nineteen more overs of the same and a chase of around 200. What they got instead was the eighth-wicket pair batting out the entire remainder of the innings.

The 128 that Babar Hayat and Ehsan Khan added is the number that decided this match, and the way it was built is worth understanding. It was not a slog. Hong Kong were 133 for 7 after 30.5 overs — a run rate of 4.34. Over the last 19.1 overs they scored at 6.68. Ehsan Khan faced 46 balls for his 35 and hit five fours, none of them in the air over the infield. Everything else was Babar. He went from 13 to 117 without giving a chance that Nepal converted, and the seven sixes came late, once he had established that Karan KC — who ended with 7-0-62-0 — had nothing left to trouble him with.

Nepal used six bowlers. Four of them went at better than 4.70. The two who did not, Karan KC (8.85) and Gulsan Jha (13.33 across three overs), bowled ten overs between them and conceded 102. That is the match.

Nepal's chase was not a collapse. It was something more painful than that: a good chase that ran out of road.

Aasif Sheikh made 44 from 50 and put on 44 for the first wicket with Arjun Kumal. Then two fell in three balls — Sheikh caught behind off Yasim Murtaza, Dev Khanal lbw to Aizaz Khan — and Nepal were 69 for 3. Rohit Paudel, the captain of most of this side's recent history, made 3 from 14 and was lbw to Kinchit Shah's occasional off-spin. Eighty-eight for 4 in the twenty-fourth, and 174 still needed.

Ishan Pandey then batted for the next twenty-five overs. His 90 from 106 balls was an innings of complete clarity about what was required — two sixes, six fours, and long stretches of taking one where there was one. He added 54 with Dipendra Singh Airee, then 49 with Gulsan Jha, and when Karan KC arrived at 191 for 6 and hit two sixes in 13 balls, Nepal were 231 for 7 at the end of the forty-seventh with 31 needed from 18.

They lost their last three wickets for 15 runs in thirteen deliveries. Karan KC caught behind off Aizaz Khan at 231. Lamichhane run out by Shahid Wasif at 239. And then, at 241 for 9 with 21 needed from nine balls, Pandey holed out to Babar Hayat off Aizaz Khan — ten short of a hundred, and one shot away from making all of it worthwhile. Aizaz Khan finished with 10-1-50-4, and three of those four wickets came in the last nine overs.

Nepal have now lost one match in this tournament, and it was the one in which they scored the most runs.

Bayuemas Oval gave both sides exactly what it gave the other: a slow, low, largely even 50-over pitch on which spin held its length and pace off the pitch was punished. Hong Kong scored at 5.22; Nepal at 5.00. Neither innings was decided by conditions.

Spin took nine of the seventeen wickets to fall. Lamichhane, Rajbanshi and Airee bowled thirty overs between them for 127 — 4.23 an over, four wickets — and the two Hong Kong spinners in Yasim Murtaza and Kinchit Shah went at 4.71 and 5.50 for three between them. The only bowling that genuinely leaked was fast: Karan KC and Gulsan Jha for Nepal, and to a lesser extent Nasrulla Rana (8.1-0-53-1) for Hong Kong.

The other conditions story is the one that does not appear on the card. This was a 09.30 start with a scheduled finish at 17.15 in Malaysian September heat, and Babar Hayat batted through 126 deliveries of it having already left the field once with an injury. Whatever it was that took him off, he came back into the hottest part of the day and stayed there for three hours.

Babar Hayat has been the best batter Hong Kong cricket has produced for a decade, and he has spent most of that decade being the best batter in sides that lose. This was different, and it was different because of the sequence: 13 not out, injured, gone; back at 80 for 5 with three specialists already dismissed; 117 not out at the close.

The construction was patient to the point of severity. He was 52 not out when the seventh wicket fell — Hong Kong 133, Babar with 65 balls behind him and a strike rate of 80. From there he scored 65 more from 61 balls with six of his seven sixes, which is not an acceleration so much as a decision, taken once and then executed with no visible change in method. He hit down the ground, he hit over midwicket, and he never once tried to protect Ehsan Khan from the strike in a way that cost Hong Kong runs — the two of them simply batted, and the total climbed from a losing one to a winning one over the course of nineteen overs.

Seven fours, seven sixes, 126 balls, and the last man standing on both counts. It is the sort of innings that gets called a rescue, which undersells it. Hong Kong were not rescued. They were carried.

This match did not have a CricIntel preview — our editorial coverage of the ACC Men's Premier Cup 2026 has run to post-match reviews rather than previews, and we have no prediction on record to be judged against here. We will not manufacture one after the fact.

What we will own is a pattern our reviews of this tournament have repeated: that Nepal's superiority in this group was a function of their spin, and that their seam bowling was the vulnerability nobody had yet exploited. Karan KC's 7-0-62-0 and Gulsan Jha's 3-0-40-0 in the game that decided the group is that vulnerability arriving at the worst possible moment. We had it right; we simply had not expected it to be the thing that cost them a semi-final draw against the tournament's form side.

Group A finished with Nepal and Hong Kong level on six points from four matches, and net run rate separated them: Nepal 1.531, Hong Kong minus 0.005. So the side that lost the head-to-head finished top, and the seeding sends Nepal to face Oman in the first semi-final at Kuala Lumpur on September 10, while Hong Kong meet an unbeaten U.A.E. at Bangi on the same morning. Both start at 09.30 local.

For Nepal, the loss changes very little on paper and a great deal in the dressing room. Oman are 2-2 in Group B and were beaten by 49 runs by the U.A.E. on the same day; Nepal will start favourites, and Lamichhane and Malla on this surface remain the best spin pairing left in the competition. But Rohit Paudel has 3, and Nepal's top order has now had two consecutive matches in which the openers gave them a platform and the middle order needed Ishan Pandey to do all of the work. That is not sustainable across a semi-final and a final.

For Hong Kong, second place brings the harder draw and the better mood. They have beaten Nepal, tied with Malaysia and won the Super Over, and lost only to Bahrain. Their bowling — Aizaz Khan, Yasim Murtaza, Ateeq Iqbal, Ehsan Khan — is deep and cheap, with four of the six bowlers used here going at under 5.70. What they have not solved is a top order in which nobody except Babar Hayat has passed 45 in this tournament. If he is fit, they can beat the U.A.E. If the injury that took him off the field on Tuesday morning is anything more than a scare, this competition just got much shorter for them.