Yuvraj Samra Scores First NPL Fifty for Pokhara

Nineteen-year-old Canadian opener Yuvraj Samra gave Pokhara Avengers the innings they had waited all season for, reaching his first Nepal Premier League fifty from just 23 balls against Karnali Yaks in Match 19 at the TU International Cricket Ground in Kirtipur on Monday, 9 November 2026. His 50, struck with six fours and two sixes, was the first half-century by any Pokhara batter in Season 3 — and it arrived in a match the winless Avengers could not afford to let slip.

The over that changed Pokhara's day

Pokhara won the toss and chose to bat first in their first day match of the season, and Samra set the tone from the start. He put on 27 for the first wicket with Mahedi Hasan before Hasan fell to Sompal Kami in the fifth over, and then built a second-wicket stand with Kushal Bhurtel that passed fifty and kept Karnali's bowlers under pressure.

The ninth over was the one that broke the game open. Jishan Alam came on and Samra took 24 runs off him — 2, 2, 6, 4, 4, 6 — with the last ball, a six, carrying him to his fifty. It was the kind of over Pokhara had not produced all season: clean hitting, no caution, and a bowler with nowhere to hide.

By the drinks break after ten overs, Pokhara were 91 for 1, with Samra unbeaten on 65 and Bhurtel on 20. For a side whose batting had managed no fifty in four matches, the contrast could hardly have been sharper. The openers had given Pokhara a platform; the middle order, so often the problem, finally had something to build on.

A debut that promised this

Samra had shown a glimpse of this two days earlier. Signed on 6 November, after Pokhara had lost three matches in a row, he made his NPL debut against Chitwan Rhinos in Match 17 and struck 19 from 14 balls with four fours before Dan Mousley bowled him. Pokhara lost that match by 30 runs, bowled out for 121 chasing 152, but the debut had a warning in it: here was a batter who attacked from the first ball.

The signing itself was a response to a batting order that had stopped scoring. Pokhara brought Samra in alongside UAE bowler Maroof Merchant, looking for the one innings that changes a game. Two matches into his NPL career, Samra has now played it.

Who is Yuvraj Samra

Samra was born on 29 September 2006 in Brampton, Ontario, and named after Indian great Yuvraj Singh. A left-handed opener, he came through age-group cricket in Canada before touring with the senior side in early 2024, and he made his ODI and T20I debuts for Canada in March 2025, against the Netherlands and Namibia. He marked his T20I debut with 37 from 18 balls.

He has been breaking Canadian records ever since. His 15-ball fifty against the Bahamas in a World Cup qualifier was the fastest by a Canadian in T20Is. Then, at the 2026 T20 World Cup, he scored a hundred against New Zealand in Chennai — the first player from an Associate nation to score a T20 World Cup hundred, and the youngest centurion in the tournament's history at 19 years and 141 days.

The name invites comparison with his namesake, and Samra has never hidden the connection. He met Yuvraj Singh twice, first in 2019 when Singh played for Toronto Nationals, and again in 2025. But the innings in Kirtipur needed no comparison to stand on its own: a 23-ball fifty, in his second NPL match, for a team that had forgotten what one looked like.

Why Pokhara needed it

Before this match, Pokhara's season had been a study in batting failure. They lost their opener to Sudurpaschim Royals after posting 145 for 7, fell nine runs short chasing 148 against Janakpur Bolts, were bowled out for 97 by Lumbini Lions, and then made 121 chasing 152 against Chitwan. Four matches, four defeats, and not one fifty.

The individual numbers told the same story. The highest score by a Pokhara batter in the first three matches was 40 not out, made by Arjun Gharti in the opener. Kushal Bhurtel top-scored with 35 against Janakpur, Chamika Karunaratne with 25 against Lumbini, and Arjun Kumal's 45 against Chitwan was the best of the season before Samra walked out on Monday. A team cannot win T20 matches when nobody passes 45.

Pokhara are the only side yet to reach the playoffs in either of the first two NPL seasons, finishing seventh in 2024 and fifth in 2025. The slump had already cost Bhurtel the captaincy, with Karunaratne taking over in Match 17, and the franchise had turned to Samra as a mid-season fix. On Monday, the fix delivered.

What it means for the run-in

A fifty does not win a match on its own. Karnali had a chase to come, with David Miller in their ranks after his 93 from 55 balls on debut in Match 16, and Pokhara's bowlers still had to defend whatever total the batters set. But for the first time this season, Pokhara had given their bowlers a score built on dominance rather than damage control.

With seven league matches per team, Pokhara have little room left. This was their fifth match, which leaves two after it, and a side that starts 0-4 does not make the playoffs by accident. Samra's fifty changes the arithmetic only if it becomes the first of several, and only if the win that has eluded Pokhara all season finally arrives with it.

For now, though, the story is simpler. A 19-year-old Canadian, in his second match in Nepal, played the innings Pokhara had been waiting four matches for. The Avengers finally have a fifty to their name this season — and a reason to believe the next one might not be far behind.

The second match of the day sees Chitwan Rhinos take on Kathmandu Gurkhas in the evening fixture at 4:30 PM NST.