Nepal didn’t just qualify for Asian Games cricket. They won the road in.
A rain-cut Singapore final over Hong Kong sealed the title. Kushal Bhurtel’s six-hitting summer is what Nagoya Group A — Afghanistan, Japan, and a quarterfinal berth — has to answer.
Kushal Bhurtel in a Nepal national-team kit — the opener who took player of the series at the Asian Games men’s T20 qualifier in Singapore with 340 runs.
Photo: Kushal Bhurtel / CC BY-SA 4.0
Nepal left Singapore as Asian Games men’s cricket qualifier champions, not just as another side that scraped a berth. In the June 8 final at the Singapore National Cricket Ground, Hong Kong posted 188 for 7 — Anshuman Rath 80 off 45, Shahid Wasif 55 off 28 — before Sher Malla’s 4 for 32 kept the chase honest. Kushal Bhurtel answered with 65 off 40. Rohit Paudel was unbeaten on 35 and Dipendra Singh Airee on 9, marking a 100th T20I, when rain stopped play at 114 for 2 in 11.3 overs. Nineteen runs ahead of the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern par, Nepal took the trophy without needing a restart.
The title was the loud ending to a quieter fact: the four semi-finalists — Nepal, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Oman — had already booked Nagoya by reaching the last four. Full Members India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan, plus hosts Japan, were already in. What Singapore decided was who joined them from the Associate and lower-ranked pool — and which of those four left with a first-place certificate. Nepal’s certificate came after an unbeaten knockout run: eight wickets over Oman in the semi-final, then the DLS win over Hong Kong.
The batting sheet is why the certificate matters. Against China on May 31, Nepal made 313 for 2 — Bhurtel 129 off 43 with six sixes in one over off Chen Zhuo Yue, then 221 runs in the win. Four days later he added 126 off 54 in a 167-run win over Malaysia. Player of the series, 340 runs, back-to-back T20I hundreds in a week. Hangzhou 2023 had already shown Nepal could pile up totals against thin opposition; Singapore showed the same battery against the teams that will share the September preliminary groups.
Those groups are the next exam. Aichi–Nagoya’s men’s cricket draws Nepal into Group A with Afghanistan and hosts Japan at Kōrogi Sports Park from September 24–26. Top two advance to quarterfinals against the seeded Full Members. Hangzhou ended for Nepal in a quarterfinal loss to India. This time the path runs through a Test nation and a home side before any medal bracket opens. The useful read on the Singapore title is not that Nepal surprised anyone in Associate cricket. It is that they arrive in Japan as the side that treated the qualifier like a statement — and that Group A is where the statement gets stress-tested.