Cyprus start Cricket World Cup campaign with defeat to Spain

By Richard Boxall

Cyprus cricketers put up a good fight in their opening T20 world cup qualifying match against Spain in Guernsey, before going down to a 15-run defeat to their highly-ranked opponents.

From the start of the match the Cyprus team, who fielded first, were on their mettle, fielding tigerishly and constantly encouraging each other. Buddika Mahesh got them off to a perfect start with a wicket on the first ball of the match, and after Vimal Khanduri took two wickets in his first over, they had Spain reeling at 33-4 in the 9th over.

However, the innings was stabilised by a century partnership in 10 overs by two batsmen who first consolidated and then gradually increased the tempo, running superbly between the wickets and later hitting a flurry of boundaries, as the Cyprus out-cricket lost its early sparkle.

Arjun Shahi had the best bowling figures (3-25 from his 4 overs) and Taranjit Singh took two good catches in the deep, but Spain’s final score of 152-6 was considerably more than looked likely in mid-innings, and presented a difficult challenge for Cyprus.

In reply Cyprus got off to a good start with a 49-run partnership for the first wicket in 7 overs. Roman Mazumder led the way with an aggressive 41, and Jimi Chialoufas, who appeared to have taken the lady commentator’s fancy, held the middle order together with 37.

The Spain attack included three spin bowlers who made runscoring difficult, and with wickets falling regularly Cyprus struggled to maintain the required scoring rate. With 21 runs needed from the last 8 balls – a difficult but not impossible task – Chialoufas holed out on the boundary edge, and the Cyprus innings ended on 137-9 from their 20 overs.

The result was a disappointment, but the team performed well in many respects against a strong opponent and can look forward with hope towards the remaining games, against Greece on Saturday, Czechia on Sunday, and Denmark on Tuesday, followed by a play-off match against a team from the other half of the tournament.