USA’s Middle East Tour Gives Insight into WCL Div 2 teams

The USA’s tour of Abu Dhabi and Oman in early December 2017 provides some insight into three of the teams Canada will face in the upcoming ICC World Cricket League Division Two in Namibia. Now the USA team may not have had much time to adjust to local conditions and managed to play three different national teams in three days to start the tour with some variety but video highlights of those three games and the two further games to complete a trio against Oman provide something for the Canadian camp to review before WCL Division Two begins in Namibia.

USA began in Abu Dhabi with a 50-over game against Nepal on December 1, 2017. Nepal stumbled to 89 all out after 36.1 overs. J Patel took 4 wickets for just 8 runs from 4.3 overs. USA opening bat Abdullah Syed thumped 44 runs from 40 balls and Roy Silva made 25* batting sixth to steer the USA to a winning 94 for 5 wickets after 22.3 overs. Silva took 2/19 from 6 overs during the Nepal innings.

Nepal’s young leg-spinner Sandeep Lamichhane, picked up by Delhi Daredevils in the recent IPL draft, bowled a tidy 6 overs that cost just 10 runs in this game.

On December 2, also in Abu Dhabi, USA slumped to 63 all out after just 18.3 of 50 overs against Kenya who scratched out a winning 64 for 6 from 22,1 overs. Timil Patel’s 16 was the best of the USA batting. It was not an innings that gave his team some hope, as with his 79 that carried the USA to just over 200 against Canada in game 2 of the 2017 Auty Cup, and it did not prove to become a match-winning effort with the bat as his 44 proved in Game 3 of that Auty Cup series. Kenyan right-arm pacer Emmanuel Bundi Ringera picked up 5 wickets for 25 runs from 5.3 overs. Each of five USA bowlers took a wicket and there was a run out as Kenya overtook USA’s total from the first ball of the 23rd over. Opening bat Alex Obanda made 22.

USA v Oman Game 1 – December 4, 2017