Mumbai
\nSpinners Crishan Kalugamage and Ben Manenti helped debutants Italy to a historic first win at the cricket T20 World Cup with a 10-wicket hammering of Nepal on Thursday.
\nKalugamage (3-18) and Manenti (2-9) combined to bowl out Nepal for 123, a total Italy\u2019s openers overhauled with 44 balls to spare in their second match at Mumbai\u2019s Wankhede Stadium.
\nBrothers Justin Mosca, who made 60, and Anthony Mosca, who hit 62, tore into the opposition attack with fours and sixes to fire their team to a win.
\nA nation better known for its football, Italy are cricket minnows and the lowest-ranked side in the 20-team tournament.
\nThey lost their opener to Scotland in Group C but bounced back.
\nNepal were a far cry from the team that ran England close on Sunday at the same venue as they collapsed from 93-3 to be bundled out in 19.3 overs.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s pretty extraordinary really. It\u2019s something a lot of people in Italy, a lot of people in this group, have dreamed of,\u201d Italy\u2019s stand-in skipper Harry Manenti said.
\n\u201cWe didn\u2019t quite nail it the other day but we backed up today and showed the world what we\u2019ve got.\u201d
\nItaly were without skipper Wayne Madsen, who dislocated his shoulder in the first loss, but came out roaring after they won the toss and elected to field first.
\nLeg-spinner Kalugamage sent back skipper Rohit Paudel for 23 and Manenti, who opened the bowling attack, took down Aasif Sheikh, for 20, with his off-spin.
\n\u201cI always wanted to help the team to win a match and do my best for my nation, Italy \u2014 I\u2019m happy,\u201d player of the match Kalugamage said.
\n\u201cThese are my brothers. I\u2019m really happy.\u201d
\nAasif Sheikh attempted to rebuild in 27 but Italy bowlers were unrelenting in their pursuit of wickets and the Nepal batting came crashing down.
\n\u201cWe need to be more consistent and today was the day to prove that, but not taking away the credit from Italy,\u201d said Paudel.
\n\u201cThey played really well today and credit must go to them.\u201d
\nThe Mosca brothers then struck eight fours and nine sixes between them to leave the Nepal bowlers in agony.
\nThe win made Italy jump to third and England slip to fourth in the group led by the West Indies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mumbai Spinners Crishan Kalugamage and Ben Manenti helped debutants Italy to a historic first win at the cricket T20 World Cup with a 10-wicket hammering of Nepal on Thursday. Kalugamage (3-18) and Manenti (2-9) combined to bowl out Nepal for 123, a total Italy\u2019s openers overhauled with 44 balls to spare in their second match …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":93634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93664,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93651\/revisions\/93664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}