HARARE – Hun­dreds from cur­rent cap­tain Shai Hope and past cap­tain Nicholas Pooran set up West In­dies for a con­vinc­ing, 101-run win against Nepal in the ICC Crick­et World Cup Qual­i­fi­er on Thurs­day in Zim­bab­we.

Hope cracked 132 and left-han­der Pooran slammed 115, and they shared a dou­ble hun­dred, fourth wick­et stand to help the Caribbean side reach 339 for sev­en from their al­lo­ca­tion of 50 overs af­ter a shaky start in their sec­ond Group A match at the Harare Sports Club.

Hope and Pooran nursed West In­dies back to good health with a stand of 216 af­ter the Caribbean side slumped to 55 for three.

Over­haul­ing such a to­tal was al­ways be­yond the ca­pac­i­ty of the Nepalese, and though they got a top score of 63 from Aarif Sheikh, they were nev­er go­ing to stop West In­dies from claim­ing their sec­ond win in a row and move ahead of hosts Zim­bab­we on net run rate at the top of the stand­ings in the group.

Kyle May­ers for­malised the re­sult when he held a sharp re­turn catch to send Karan Kha­tri Chhetri pack­ing for 28 with two balls re­main­ing in the Nepal chase.

“We were put on the back foot there,” Hope said. “The key was ab­sorb­ing as much pres­sure as pos­si­ble and then find a way to trans­fer that pres­sure in the back end.

“Pooran made it a lot eas­i­er for me. The aim was to take it as deep as pos­si­ble give us the best chance to­wards the end.”

The Caribbean side could con­firm their place in the Su­per Six stage of the Qual­i­fi­er with a third win in a row against the Zim­bab­weans on Sat­ur­day at the same venue.

Sent in to bat, West In­dies were rock­ing on nine for two in the fifth over af­ter Kyle May­ers was caught at mid-wick­et for one off Karan, and fel­low pac­er Gul­san Jha got John­son Charles caught be­hind for a duck.

Open­er Bran­don King was just be­gin­ning to find his flow and start­ed the re­pair ef­fort with Hope be­fore leg-spin­ner Sandeep Lamich­hane bowled him for 32, and the Caribbean side stum­bled to 55 for three.

Pooran came to­geth­er with Hope in the 16th over and en­joyed a huge slice of good for­tune in the next over when wick­et­keep­er Aasif Sheikh dropped him, on three, off left-arm spin­ner Lalit Ra­jban­shi.

This ap­peared to en­er­gise Pooran, and he cel­e­brat­ed the re­prieve with the first of his four six­es and con­tin­ued to in­dulge him­self, but Hope was no slouch, and they both reached the mile­stone in the 40th over.

Hope clipped the third ball of the over from Gul­san through square leg for two runs to com­plete his 15th ODI hun­dred be­fore Pooran carved the last ball to the back­ward point bound­ary to ar­rive at his sec­ond ODI hun­dred – four years af­ter scor­ing his first.

“I don’t think I hit the tar­gets where I want­ed to, but I’m hap­py to just bat as deep as I pos­si­bly could there,” Hope said. “The team re­al­ly need­ed me.

“They [Nepal] bowled well, and I must com­mend their bowlers, es­pe­cial­ly their spin­ners, they stuck to their task well. We bat­ted well in that pe­ri­od to over­come their spin threat. There’s ob­vi­ous­ly room for im­prove­ment, so we need to make sure we are tick­ing those box­es go­ing in­to the next game.”

Pooran of­fered a re­turn catch to off-spin­ner Dipen­dra Singh Airee with six overs re­main­ing, and West In­dies thrashed a fur­ther 68 from them for the loss of three wick­ets.

Ra­jban­shi claimed Hope and all-rounder Keemo Paul in the fi­nal over and end­ed with three for 52 from 10 overs, mak­ing him the most suc­cess­ful Nepal bowler.

Pac­er Alzarri Joseph, bowl­ing ag­gres­sive­ly and shar­ing the new ball with Ja­son Hold­er, set back the Nepalese ear­ly when he bowled Kushal Bhur­tel for five in the sec­ond over.

Hold­er pushed Nepal back fur­ther when he got Bhim Shar­ki caught be­hind for two in the fifth over, and they laboured to 42 for two at the end of the Pow­er Play.

West In­dies field­ed a bit ragged­ly, and Nepalese tried to re­build with their cap­tain Ro­hit Paudel scor­ing 30 and Aasif Sheikh get­ting 28, but they were a few flash­es of bril­liance from sub­sti­tute field­er Kea­cy Car­ty, and this stemmed any re­al mo­men­tum.

West In­dies had Nepal on the back-foot on 114 for five at the halfway mark of the chase, but

Aarif pro­vid­ed the most re­sis­tance and put on 68 for the sev­enth wick­et with Gul­san that brought re­spectabil­i­ty to the to­tal.

West In­dies claimed the last four Nepalese wick­ets for 41 in 38 balls – in­clud­ing Gul­san for 42 and Aarif – with Joseph, left-arm spin­ner Akeal Ho­sein, and pac­er Keemo Paul all tak­ing two wick­ets.

In the oth­er match, the Nether­lands bounced back from a nar­row de­feat against Zim­bab­we when they beat the Unit­ed States by five wick­ets at the Takashin­ga Crick­et Club.

The Dutch cap­tain Scott Ed­wards led from the front with an un­beat­en 67 to car­ry his side over the fin­ish line af­ter the Amer­i­can made 211 for eight bat­ting first.

The qual­i­fiers con­tin­ue on Fri­day with Group B lead­ers Oman chas­ing a third win in a row against Sri Lan­ka at the Queens Sports Club in Bu­l­awayo, where Scot­land face Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates at the Bu­l­awayo Ath­let­ic Club.

CMC

SCORES:

West In­dies vs Nepal

WEST IN­DIES 339 for sev­en off 50 overs (Shai Hope 132, Nicholas Pooran 115, Bran­don King 32, Rov­man Pow­ell 29; Lalit Ra­jban­shi 3-52).

NEPAL 238 off 49.4 overs (Aarif Sheikh 63, Gul­san Jha 42, Ro­hit Paudel 30, Aasif Sheikh 28, Karan Kha­tri Chhetri 28, Dipen­dra Singh Airee 23; Ja­son Hold­er 3-34, Alzarri Joseph 2-45, Akeal Ho­sein 2-49, Keemo Paul 2-63).

West In­dies won by 101 runs.

Nether­lands vs USA (Takashin­ga Crick­et Club, Harare)

USA 211/8 (50 overs) (Shayan Ja­hangir 71, Jessy Singh 38; Ryan Klein 2-31, Bas de Leede 2-37)

NETHER­LANDS 214/5 (43.2 overs) (Scott Ed­wards 67 not out, Te­ja Nidama­nu­ru 58; Jessy Singh 2-35, Ali Khan 1-16).

Nether­lands won by five wick­ets.