DUBAI – A re­vi­talised West In­dies out­fit de­liv­ered a crush­ing ten-wick­et vic­to­ry over Nepal in the fi­nal T20I in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates on Tues­day, pre­vent­ing a his­toric white­wash and show­cas­ing the po­tent tal­ent with­in their ranks.

De­spite the em­phat­ic na­ture of the win, the re­sult does lit­tle to over­shad­ow Nepal’s land­mark achieve­ment in se­cur­ing their first-ever se­ries win against a full mem­ber na­tion af­ter claim­ing the se­ries 2-1.

Choos­ing to bowl first on a slug­gish Shar­jah pitch of­fer­ing con­sis­tent side­ways move­ment, the re­gion­al side were vin­di­cat­ed by a dis­ci­plined bowl­ing per­for­mance.

The tone was set ear­ly, with Nepal’s open­ers find­ing bound­aries hard to come against ac­cu­rate bowl­ing led by skip­per Akeal Ho­sein.

Play­er of the se­ries Kushal Bhur­tel man­aged to hit a few lusty blows in his top score of 39, as the vis­i­tors put a stran­gle­hold on the home side’s top or­der, sti­fling the pow­er­play that in­clud­ed 20 dot balls.

The pres­sure told quick­ly af­ter the field­ing re­stric­tions eased, with Ho­sein and the im­pres­sive play­er of the match, Ra­mon Sim­monds, ex­ploit­ing the con­di­tions per­fect­ly.

Sim­monds, brought in as one of two changes for the must-win en­counter, was the game-chang­er, fin­ish­ing with re­mark­able fig­ures of 4-15 from three overs.

His im­pact was im­me­di­ate, trig­ger­ing a cat­a­stroph­ic mid­dle-or­der col­lapse for Nepal. In his first two overs, Sim­monds re­moved the dan­ger­ous-look­ing Ro­hit Paudel for 17 and Aarif Sheikh for 6, while a mix-up saw Gul­san Jha run out for 10.

From a pre­car­i­ous po­si­tion of 91-5 in the 15th over, Nepal nev­er re­cov­ered, with Sim­monds mop­ping up the tail to bowl them out for 122.

The West In­dies chase was a mas­ter­class in con­trolled ag­gres­sion. Open­ers Amir Jan­goo and Ac­k­eem Au­guste ex­tin­guished any faint hopes of a Nepal fight­back from the very first over, with Jan­goo launch­ing a Karan KC de­liv­ery on­to the sta­di­um roof.

The pair feast­ed on any­thing short or way­ward, pep­per­ing the leg-side bound­ary with ease. They raced to a 47-run pow­er play, ef­fec­tive­ly end­ing the con­test with­in the first six overs. A rare dropped chance by Paudel to re­prieve Au­guste on 29 was a sym­bol of Nepal’s de­flat­ed en­er­gy.

Jan­goo was in sub­lime touch, and af­ter a sol­id foun­da­tion, he shift­ed in­to a dev­as­tat­ing top gear. He brought up his fifty off just 38 balls and then un­leashed a bru­tal as­sault, smash­ing five six­es in his last nine de­liv­er­ies. The Trinida­di­an left-han­der would fin­ish not out on 74.

At the oth­er end, Au­guste pro­vid­ed the per­fect foil with 41 not out, as the vis­i­tors gal­loped to their tar­get with a mas­sive 46 balls to spare, se­cur­ing their first-ever ten-wick­et win in T20Is.

CMC

Sum­marised scores

NEPAL 122 in 19.5 overs (Khushal Bhur­tel 39, Sandeep Jo­ra 14; Ra­mon Sim­monds 4-15, Je­di­ah Blades 2-20) vs WEST IN­DIES 123-0 in 12.2 overs (Amir Jan­goo 74 not out, Akeem Au­guste 41 not out)

Re­sult: West In­dies won by 10 wick­ets.

Se­ries: Nepal won 2-1.