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Kushal Malla hasn’t yet clicked as Chitwan Rhinos would have expected in the inaugural edition of the Nepal Premier League (NPL) 2024 with the bat. But the Rhinos didn’t just get the 20-year-old purely from a batting standpoint.
They got him for the package: the ability to bowl some left-arm spin on the dying wickets in Nepal. That’s exactly what he did in the clash against Sudarpaschim Royals on December 8, when he single-handedly applied brakes to a high-flying Royals’ start.
Neither Rijan Dhakal nor Sohail Tanvir could impact the game till then, as the Royals’ were well-placed at 44/1 in a run chase of 165. But that’s where Malla entered the scene and left no crumbs. With the pitch deteriorating, the assignment was quite simple for the left-arm spinner: bowl slow and let the batters apply force on the ball.
Malla realised that Binod Bhandari wasn’t going to stay patient, and that’s when the 20-year-old tossed the ball up, slowing it down considerably to tempt the left-handed Bhandari. The 34-year-old failed to keep the ball down and was beaten by the lack of pace, triggering a mini-collapse.
The left-arm spinner continued his modus operandi against Brandon McMullen, who was already on 13 off eight. But the slowness of the surface and the lack of bounce ensured that McMullen, normally good against spin, too, walked off the field.
Rhinos’ skipper ensured that his bowling was almost impossible for the Royals to get any boundaries off it, conceding miserly, with just eight runs off his first three overs. While Ishan Pandey got a couple of boundaries off Malla’s bowling, it was quite the Midas Touch from the Rhinos skipper to bring himself on in the fifth over of the innings.
It could have been quite a different tale otherwise for the Rhinos.
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