Dubai: Hong Kong skipper Anshuman Rath, who held his head high after making India sweat on Tuesday in the fourth match of the Unimoni Asia Cup, says his team’s performance has shown the cricketing world that Associate teams are capable of giving Test-playing nations a scare.
When Gulf News asked Rath, who scored 73 in a stunning 174-run opening wicket partnership with Nizakat Khan (92), what was the reaction of the star Indian players in the middle and whether he heard any comments, Rath said: “When me and Kat (Nizakat) were out there, I could tell that the Indian players were getting anxious. Shikhar (Dhawan) walked past us and he said to Dhoni: ‘280 won’t be enough here, we should’ve got 350 runs’.”
Rath said that he knew India would struggle as soon as Nizakat and he started stroking comfortably. “After the first 10 overs, we were 58 for no loss and I just looked at Kat and said we can actually turn India over,” he said. “We are happy with what we did.”
Rath and his team would have been over the moon had they pulled off one of the biggest upsets in the history of cricket. They fell short of their dream by just 26 runs.
“We are proud, but it’s bittersweet,” Rath said. “We should’ve probably won it, but lost few too many wickets in the middle during key moments. Credit to the India bowlers for sticking to their plans. Going into the tournament we had no pressure, and we wanted to play with a smile on our faces. It would’ve been nice if we rolled over the best team in the world, but I’m super proud of the boys.
“Nizakat had batted at No. 4 in the Asia Cup qualifiers, but he’s delivered as the opener against the best white-ball side in the world. We showed the kind of cricket we can play. Our bowlers stuck out in the heat, and we pulled India to under 300.”
Rath said this tournament experience has taught Hong Kong a big lesson and that is never to be in awe of opponents. “It was just a confidence thing,” he said. “You look at the way we batted against Pakistan. You could tell we were a bit timid, a bit rigid, sort of ‘oh, we’re playing Pakistan’. When we restricted India to just 280, we knew it was a good batting deck, but obviously India has the bowlers, but we knew that 280 was about par. Only just over par, I reckon. We had the batting firepower, we had nothing to lose. So I said ‘game on’.”
Rath now wants Hong Kong too to make a mark in world cricket like Afghanistan have done. “You look at Afghanistan as a prime example,” he said. “Back in 2011 to 2015, they were performing like us — upsetting the odd team, but going through a string of performances where they were getting bowled out for 140-150 on good decks. Just like we did against Pakistan. With the right backing, they started to get better and better, training a lot harder, fully contracted — the professionalism was there. And now they’re pretty much about to top Group B in the Asia Cup. Today we proved that we are also capable.”
