Rahul Chopra finished on 100 not out, and Nepal are going to the Asia Cup anyway
Nepal beat the UAE by 44 runs in the ACC Men’s Premier Cup final in Kuala Lumpur to take the last place at the 2027 ODI Asia Cup in Bangladesh.
Sep 12, 2026
Nepal made 313 for 9 at the Bayuemas Oval in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday, and the United Arab Emirates were bowled out for 269 with five balls of the chase still unused. That is a 44-run win in the ACC Men’s Premier Cup final, and it carries Nepal into the ODI Asia Cup in Bangladesh in 2027.
The man who took them there opened the batting, faced 106 balls, and then stood behind the stumps for the whole of the UAE reply.
Aasif Sheikh made 102 before he was caught in the 36th over
Sheikh’s hundred was the innings the final turned on. Eight fours, four sixes, 106 balls, and he was caught by Aayan Afzal Khan off Haider Ali. Arjun Kumal gave him a start at the other end, 43 off 63, before a run out ended that.
Rohit Paudel made 40 off 44 in the middle overs and Ishan Pandey got 13. None of that would have added up to 313 without what happened late in the innings.
Gulsan Jha’s 52 off 38 changed the size of the target
Jha scored at a rate the rest of Nepal’s innings never got near. Dipendra Singh Airee made 18 off 18 alongside him, and Basir Ahamad, batting at nine, finished 15 not out off four balls. That is the sort of cameo nobody talks about until the margin comes in at 44.
Ibrar Ahmad was the best of the UAE bowlers and it still cost him. Four wickets for 62 in eight overs is a spell that keeps a side in a game, and it did, right up to the point where Nepal’s lower order got away from him. The extras column added 21.
Rahul Chopra got his hundred and had nobody left to bat with
The UAE chase started fast. Tanish Suri hit 42 off 28 before Karan KC had him caught by Sundeep Jora. Akshdeep Nath made nothing off four balls, and Adeeb Usmani had already been bowled by Lalit Rajbanshi. Three down, and still more than 250 to get.
Harpreet Singh made 33 off 41 to steady it. Then Chopra and Sohaib Khan batted Nepal’s spinners out of their rhythm, Sohaib making 52 off 57, Chopra reaching three figures off 105 balls.
He finished 100 not out, stranded, when Haider Ali was stumped by Sheikh off Basir Ahamad. The wicketkeeper who had made 102 earlier in the day ended the match with his gloves. Karan KC took three for 49 and Rajbanshi two for 43 from his ten overs.
A second Asia Cup, and a new captain who got them there
Sandeep Lamichhane took over as Nepal’s ODI captain shortly before this tournament, replacing Paudel, and he bowled his full ten overs in the final for one wicket. Nepal have now won the Premier Cup twice, and both times the beaten finalists were the UAE.
The first of those, in Kathmandu in 2023, was also a 50-over tournament and also had Gulsan Jha in the middle of it. He made 67 that day as Nepal chased 118 to win by seven wickets. Three years on he made 52 off 38 in a final where 313 was needed rather than 118.
What followed in 2023 was harder. Nepal were drawn with India and Pakistan, lost to Pakistan by 238 runs in Multan and to India by ten wickets in Kandy, and went home after two matches. The 2027 edition runs from 18 June to 4 July in Bangladesh, six teams across two groups with a Super Four stage, and the final is at Mirpur. Nepal will go into it having just made 313 in a final, which is 195 more than they needed to chase in the last one.