The World Cup qualifiers are underway. Ten teams are fighting for a place in the main stage of the ODI World Cup to be held in India. Where this fight is divided into two groups. Zimbabwe, West Indies, Nepal, the United States, and the Netherlands are competing in Group A. Group B features Oman, Sri Lanka, Scotland, Ireland, and the United. Several matches of the qualifiers have already been held. Where cricket fans have seen several surprises!
The first surprise of the World Cup qualifier was Oman's five-wicket win over Ireland. In that match, Ireland batted first and scored 281 runs for the loss of seven wickets. Dockrell played a brilliant innings of 91 runs for Ireland in that match. Another young batsman Harry Tector played an important inning of 52 runs. Along with that, Ireland got a good collection of 281 runs with little contribution from the rest.
However, Ireland's performance with the ball wasn't good at all in that match. On the other hand, Oman's batting performance was outstanding. Despite a poor start to their innings, Oman cruised to victory thanks to some brilliant batting by Kashyap Prajapati and Aqib Ilyas. After them, Zeeshan Maqsood, Mohammad Nadeem, and Shoaib Khan's superb finish saw Oman record a record win.
The 2nd incident of World Cup qualifying happened also with Ireland. After Oman, they also lost against Scotland yesterday. They lost the crucial match against Scotland by just one wicket. This loss made it almost impossible for Ireland to make it to the main stage of the World Cup!
In the match between Scotland and Ireland, Scotland won the toss and decided to bowl. They aimed to take Ireland's wicket early and put them under pressure. He succeeded in that purpose. The team took the first five wickets of Ireland in just 70 runs. But Ireland bounced back from that position. Cutis Champher's 100 and Dockrell's 69 made the team score a total of 286 runs.
They went down to score 287 runs, but Scotland lost the first six wickets early, but with the amazing batting of Michael Least and Mark Watt, Scotland made the impossible possible. The team defeated Ireland by one wicket in an exciting match.
Except for these two matches, the results of all other matches were much expected. Now it's a matter of seeing which teams make it to the main stage of the World Cup!
