Aiming to bounce back

Bahrain’s U19s national cricket team returned home from a regional competition disappointed but vowing to knuckle down and grow stronger from the experience.

The team took part in the ACC U19 Western Region Tournament in the UAE last week, but after an encouraging start they were knocked out in the group stages.

In their first match, the team beat Iran by six wickets after scuttling their opponents out for a mere 66 in a 50-over match.

But this was followed by a nine wicket defeat to the UAE and a 127 run trouncing to Saudi Arabia in their final group game, meaning the team was eliminated before the semi-final stage.

The tournament was eventually won by UAE, who defeated Kuwait in the final by 90 runs.

Head coach Azeem Ul Haque was downbeat after the tournament, but believes that the team will come back stronger.

He said: “The team was aiming for and expecting to reach the semi-finals, but unfortunately we didn’t qualify. It’s disappointing at this level, but we’ll use this as motivation to improve our game and make sure we give a better account of ourselves next time.

“We had a lot of learning about ourselves in the build-up to this tournament. This is a new team as most of the earlier batch of U19 players have passed the age threshold, so this experience will prepare the younger bunch to do better in the next ICC or ACC tours.

“You learn from victories, but you learn a lot more from defeats. Our next tournament to look forward to is the U16 ACC Western Region Tournament in October and we will be ready for that.”