Sandeep: Team Win Mattered More Than My Hat-Trick

Sandeep Lamichhane took a hat-trick and six wickets, and he did not know he had done the first of those things until a teammate came running to tell him. The Biratnagar Kings captain had just produced the bowling performance of the Nepal Premier League season so far, and the first thing he wanted to talk about afterwards was not the record. It was the two points. The team's victory, he said at the post-match conference, mattered more to him than the hat-trick, and everything he said after that explained why a captain who had just taken six wickets for 27 runs was talking about the table instead of himself.

The hat-trick he did not know about

The hat-trick itself was a strange one, which is part of why it passed him by. He took Yuvraj Samra's wicket with the last ball of one over, Samra caught at point by Isuru Udana after an innings of 84 off 47 balls. Then, in his next over, he trapped Pokhara captain Chamika Karunaratne and Kiran Thagunna leg-before-wicket off consecutive deliveries. The decision on Karunaratne's wicket went to the Decision Review System, and the delay was long enough that Sandeep lost track of the sequence. It was only when Imran Tahir ran over to tell him, after the third wicket, that he realised he had taken a hat-trick. It was the first hat-trick of Season 3, and it came in a spell that finished with six wickets for 27 runs from four overs, all six of them within three overs.

A plan built on the pitch

Sandeep's account of the spell was the account of a captain who had read the pitch before he bowled on it. He had judged that the surface would not produce 180 or 190 runs, and that a total of around 160 was the realistic shape of the innings. Biratnagar planned their bowling around that reading, and around the weaknesses of the Pokhara batters, changing pace and variation at the right moments to keep the total down. Pokhara were bowled out for 132 in 17.5 overs, and the plan had worked: the batting side never got the score their start had promised, and the collapse, five wickets for ten runs after Samra's dismissal, was the result of sustained pressure rather than a single lucky over.

The context makes the figures even more striking. Sandeep had taken only one wicket in his previous five matches of the season, and he became the first bowler in the third edition of the league to take a five-wicket haul. His six for 27 are the second-best bowling figures in NPL history, behind only Shahab Alam's six for 25 for Kathmandu Gorkhas against Pokhara last season. He was named the league's best bowler in the previous edition, with 17 wickets in nine matches, but this season had given him almost nothing until Thursday. Then, in one evening, he took six times as many wickets as he had managed in the five matches before it.

The chase, and the advice in the middle

The chase of 133 was not the formality the target suggested. Biratnagar lost early wickets, and by the drinks break they were 56 for three and under real pressure. The pitch, Sandeep said, had begun to help the spinners as the evening wore on, and Pokhara's spinners bowled well enough to make the small target feel large. His advice to the batters in the middle was to refuse to rush: take the game forward with one or two boundaries at a time, and let the target come to them rather than chasing it in a hurry. Biratnagar reached 136 for six in 19.2 overs, with four balls to spare, and the advice had held.

The men who finished the job earned the captain's praise, and he gave it generously. Basir Ahmad and Shehan Jayasuriya played the middle-order innings that steadied the chase, and Isuru Udana, playing his first match in place of Andre Russell, finished it with an unbeaten 25 off 12 balls. Udana was the replacement for the man who had won Biratnagar two matches almost single-handed, and Sandeep called him an excellent team player. It was the kind of praise that says as much about the captain as about the player: the record belonged to Sandeep, but the win, in his telling, belonged to the men who batted after him.

Two points before net run rate

Biratnagar had the chance to finish the match quickly and improve their net run rate, and Sandeep said the team had chosen not to chase it. Finishing in 15 or 16 overs would have been good for the rate, but chasing the rate can cost a side the two points already in its hands, and the two points were what mattered. It was a captain's decision, made in the middle and defended afterwards, and it tells you how Biratnagar see the rest of their season: the table first, the arithmetic second.

The win mattered because of what was left. Biratnagar had to win to keep their hopes of a top-four finish alive, and they did, moving to fourth place with six points from six matches, three wins and three defeats. Their last league match is against Lumbini Lions, and the playoff race will go down to it. Pokhara, meanwhile, became the first team to be eliminated from the league stage, with one win and five defeats from six matches. The side that lost the match and the side that won it are now on opposite sides of the line, and the evening belonged to the captain who did not know, until the very end, that he had taken a hat-trick at all.

A record that can wait

Sandeep said he gets more happiness when his performance helps the team win than from a personal milestone like a hat-trick or a five-wicket haul, and Thursday gave him both at once. The hat-trick and the six wickets will be remembered, and they should be: the first hat-trick of the season, the first five-wicket haul of the season, and the second-best figures the league has ever seen. But the captain's own verdict was that the record could wait, and the two points could not. Biratnagar are still in the race because of it, and the last league match, against Lumbini, will decide whether the evening in Kirtipur was the turning point of their season or only its brightest moment.