Melbourne Stars' Academy has defeated Nepal by 31 runs in third match of the ongoing Top End T20 Series Cricket Tournament held in the Northern Territory of Australia on Monday.
MSA restricted Nepal to 144/7 runs in the allotted 20 overs while the latter was chasing the 176-run target.
Austin Anlezark, Doug Warren grabbed 2 wickets each while Aryan Sharma and Chris Howe took 1 wicket each for MSA to prevent from reaching the target.
Despite Aasif Sheikh's 53-run haul, Nepal failed to reach the target. Sheikh hit 3 fours and 1 six off 49 deliveries. Similarly, Captain Rohit Paudel notched up 33 runs off 31 balls while Kushal Bhurtel scored 25 runs off 13 balls.
Earlier, electing to bat first after winning the toss at the TIO Stadium, Darwin on Monday, Australia's Melbourne Stars' Academy gathered 175 runs in the given 20 overs with the loss of seven wickets.
Melbourne Stars' Blake Macdonald contributed the highest 74 runs for the team followed by Thomas Rogers with 65 runs while wicket keeper Sam Harper contributed 11 runs. The other batsmen could not achieve double-digit runs.
For Nepal, Sandeep Lamichhane took 3 wickets and Sompal Kami and Sahab Alam took 1 each.
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