South Asian Games 2019: Bangladesh defeat Sri Lanka to complete clean sweep of cricket gold medals
The penultimate day of action at the South Asian Games 2019 saw the end of the cricket tournament as the men's gold medal match witnessed Bangladesh get the gold medal defeating the Sri Lankan side.
The men's tournament was competed by a field of five teams - Bangladesh U-23, Sri Lanka U-23, Bhutan, Maldives and the host nation Nepal. The matches took place at the Tribhuvan University International Cricket Ground in Kirtipur.
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The league stage saw all the sides play each other once as Sri Lankan U-23 team finished atop the final standings winning all their matches followed by Bangladesh U-23 who won three matches and lost just once. Nepal finished on the third spot with two wins whereas Maldives got one win to join Nepal in the bronze medal match.
Earlier in the day, Nepal got the win over the Maldives in the third-place playoff as they chased down the paltry total of 95 runs after the Maldivian men were undone by Lalit Rajbanshi's 3/6 in his spell of four overs. Nepal's Aarif Sheikh top scored for the home nation with a score of 32 runs as they chased down the target comfortably in 16.1 overs.
The gold medal match began with Bangladesh winning the toss who put Sri Lankan youngsters in to bat first. A solid bowling effort saw them reduce the Sri Lankan side to a total of 122 all out at the end of 20 overs. Bangladesh's Hasan Mahmud was the pick of the bowlers ending with figures of 3/20 in his spell of four overs.
Bangaldeshi openers Soumya Sarkar and Saif Hassan gave them a solid start in the chase of 123 runs with the skipper Sarkar scoring 27 and Hassan managing to get 33 runs to put them in a strong position. Nazmul Hossain Shanto came in to bat and scored an unbeaten 35 runs in 28 balls to steer the side to victory and clinch Bangladesh's second gold medal in cricket at the South Asian Games 2019.In the 2010 edition of the South Asian Games, Bangladesh had defeated the same opponents Sri Lanka in the gold medal match.
The Bangladeshi women had also claimed the gold medal in the women's tournament defeating the Sri Lankan women in the final encounter.