Pokhara Will Fight to Win Last Match, Says Maruf

Pokhara Avengers are out of the Nepal Premier League playoffs, and the dressing room knows it. A four-wicket defeat to Biratnagar Kings in Match 22 at Kirtipur on Thursday ended the Avengers' league-stage campaign with a game still to play, and the first voice out of the camp afterwards belonged to Maruf Merchant. The message was short and defiant: the playoffs may be gone, but the last match is not a dead rubber to this team.

The evening it ended

Pokhara won the toss and chose to bat first at the Tribhuvan University ground, and for a while the decision looked sound. Yuvraj Samra was timing the ball beautifully at the top of the order, and the Avengers had a platform to build on. Then the innings fell apart in the middle overs, and it fell apart spectacularly. Pokhara were bowled out for 132 in 17.5 overs, a total that never looked like troubling a side chasing with ten wickets in hand.

The damage was done by one man. Biratnagar captain Sandeep Lamichhane, bowling his leg-spin with the control of a bowler who knew exactly what the pitch was offering, finished with six wickets for 27 runs in four overs, including a hat-trick. Samra himself was one of the victims, caught for 84 from 47 balls after carrying the innings almost on his own. The hat-trick balls removed Samra, captain Chamika Karunaratne for a duck and Kiran Thagunna for a duck, three wickets in the space of an over that turned a recoverable position into a collapse.

Biratnagar chased the target of 133 down with four wickets in hand, reaching 136 for 6 in 19.2 overs. The win kept the Kings' own playoff hopes alive and took them to six points from six matches. For Pokhara, the arithmetic was brutally simple. One win and five defeats from six matches, two points, bottom of the table, and no combination of results in the remaining games can lift them into the top four. They became the first team in Season 3 to be formally eliminated.

Merchant: we will try 100 percent

Merchant spoke for the side at the post-match press conference, and he did not hide behind excuses. The batting had not done its job, he said, and the players knew it. The target the dressing room had in mind was 140 to 150, a total that would have given the bowlers something to defend on a surface that was offering help. Instead the innings stopped at 132, and the bowlers were left defending a score that was always short.

"We couldn't score as many runs as we thought. Our batting day was not good today. But Yuvraj played well," he said. The praise for Samra was the one bright note in an otherwise flat assessment. The opener's 84 from 47 balls, with seven fours and five sixes, was the only innings of substance in the Pokhara card, and it deserved to be recognised even in defeat. The next highest score was 22, and no other batter passed 15. A team cannot win many matches on one innings, and Merchant's words carried the weight of a player who understood that.

He was just as clear about what comes next. Pokhara have one league match left, against Kathmandu Gorkhas at Kirtipur on Sunday 15 November, and Merchant said the side would approach it exactly as it approached every other game this season. "We had said earlier that we would leave no stone unturned. All the players will try 100% in the last match as well. Even if we don't reach the playoffs, we are aiming to win the last game," he said.

There was warmth in his remarks about the experience itself. Playing cricket in Nepal, he said, had been very good, and he spoke fondly of the environment, the people and the supporters. It was the voice of a player who had enjoyed the tournament even as his team's campaign fell apart, and it gave the press conference a grace that the scorecard did not.

A season that slipped away

The elimination did not come out of nowhere. Pokhara lost their first four matches of the season, and by the time the fourth defeat arrived, the mood inside the camp had already turned public. Batter Arjun Kumal admitted after the 30-run defeat to Chitwan Rhinos that the side's poor performances were behind the falling crowds at Pokhara matches, and that the players, not the supporters, carried the responsibility for bringing them back. It was an unusually honest admission from a young player, and it told its own story about a campaign going wrong.

The leadership changed mid-season as well. Chamika Karunaratne took over the captaincy from Kushal Bhurtel before the match against Chitwan, a switch that signalled the management was searching for a spark. The spark came, briefly, in Match 19 against Karnali Yaks. Pokhara posted 217 for 3, with Samra smashing 102 from 48 balls and Bhurtel adding 62 from 39, and then bowled Karnali out for 154 to win by 63 runs. It was the first win of the season, the first points on the board, and for an evening it looked like the start of a recovery.

It was not. The win over Karnali stands as the only victory of the campaign, and the match since has followed the old pattern. The batting has been the recurring problem. Pokhara were bowled out for 121 in 19 overs chasing 152 against Chitwan, and for 132 in 17.5 overs against Biratnagar. Twice in the space of a week the batting has failed to last the twenty overs, and twice the bowlers have been asked to defend totals that were never enough. Samra's century against Karnali showed what the batting can do. The rest of the season has shown what it usually does.

The numbers tell the same story. Five defeats in six matches, and the defeats have not been close ones. The side has been beaten by 30 runs, by four wickets after being bowled out cheaply, and in the early weeks by margins that left no doubt. Only the win over Karnali, by 63 runs, went the other way. A team that wins one game in six does not need a single explanation. It needs several, and Pokhara have supplied them all season: collapses at the top, a middle order that has not fired together, and totals that have left the bowlers with too little to defend.

What the last match still means

Sunday's match against Kathmandu Gorkhas will be played for pride, and pride is not nothing in a tournament like this. Kathmandu sit second in the table with eight points from five matches, and they will arrive in Kirtipur as the strongest side Pokhara have faced all season. The Gorkhas have won four of their five games, and their only defeat came in the opening match of the tournament. They also play Sudurpaschim Royals on Friday 13 November, so by the time Sunday arrives the shape of their campaign will be clearer. But whatever happens on Friday, Kathmandu will start as favourites on Sunday.

That is precisely why the match matters to Pokhara. A win over the table-toppers, in the final game of a disappointing season, would be the kind of result that changes how a campaign is remembered. It would give the supporters something to carry into the off-season, and it would give the players a reason to believe that the win over Karnali was not a one-off. Merchant's promise to give 100 percent is easy to say and harder to deliver, but it is the only promise worth making now.

There is also the matter of Samra. The opener has been Pokhara's one consistent batting threat, with a century against Karnali and 84 against Biratnagar, and Sunday is his last chance in this tournament to add to that record. A big innings against the league leaders would be a fitting end to a personal campaign that has deserved better support. The bowling, too, has had its moments. Mehedi Hasan took three wickets in the win over Karnali, and the attack has shown it can defend a total when it is given one. The problem has never been the bowling in isolation. It has been the runs on the board.

The table after Match 23

The elimination also sharpens the picture at the top of the table. Lumbini Lions became the first team into the playoffs later on Thursday, beating Karnali Yaks by four wickets in Match 23 to reach nine points from six matches. Kathmandu and Sudurpaschim Royals sit on eight points each, and the winner of their meeting on Friday reaches ten points and a guaranteed playoff place. Biratnagar, on six points from six matches, are still alive. Karnali, on four points from six, are hanging on. Chitwan Rhinos, on five points from five matches, have two games left to play.

Pokhara's fate, by contrast, is settled. Two points from six matches, one win, five defeats, and a last match that can change nothing in the standings. That is the reality Merchant and his teammates must carry into Sunday. The consolation, if there is one, is that the final game is entirely in their own hands. No other result matters. No net run rate calculation applies. Win, and the season ends with a victory over the league leaders. Lose, and it ends as it has been played: with a batting line-up that promised more than it delivered.

Two teams left Kirtipur on Thursday night heading in opposite directions. Biratnagar went home with their playoff hopes intact and a captain who had just taken six wickets including a hat-trick. Pokhara went home knowing their tournament was over. What Merchant said afterwards will be tested on Sunday, when the side plays its last match of the season with nothing at stake but its own standards. The playoffs may be gone, but the last game is still a game of cricket, and Pokhara intend to win it.