In Group B, Uganda posted its first victory of the tournament after it defeated United States of America (USA) by four wickets in Sharjah.
Davis Arinaitwe (left) 27 and 1-13 earned him the man of the match award. Photo: ICC
USA captain Sushil Nadkarni held the side’s innings together scoring 39 runs with four sixes in his performance to help the side post a total of 123-8 in its 20 overs.
In its chase, Uganda lost early wickets but Frank Nsubuga (30) played a brisk hand along with skipper Davis Arinaitwe (27 not out). The duo added 47 runs for the sixth wicket. Arinaitwe’s all-round show (27 & 1-13) helped him win the Man of the Match award.
Arinaitwe said: It is always a pleasure to lead from the front in a win. The win may have been hard-earned, but we will take it. A win is a win, good or bad or easy or hard does not matter. We started off a little poorly, but in the end we did well.
“After losing a few early wickets, we re-assessed the situation with Frank (Nsubunga). We were always confident of winning since it was not a par score for this pitch. I think we did well in restricting them to 123 since it is a 140-160 kind of pitch.”
“It was a tough but disappointing start for us. We had planned to restrict them to 40-odd in the first 10 overs and then make it difficult for them in the last 10. But our planning did not work well because we did not bowl good lengths in the end overs. We let them score too freely in the end overs, especially they hit a lot of sixes. I batted well on a slowish pitch. But in the end I think we were about 20 runs short on the pitch. Despite that we should have closed out the match considering the situation we were in,” admitted Nadkarni post-match.
