(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Ghulam Shabber's half century and excellent bowling performances from Mohammad Naveed, Imran Haider and Ahmed Raza was the highlight of UAE's 46-run win over Oman in the ICC World Cricket League Division Two at Windhoek on Monday.
Taking the field after back-to-back defeats against Canada and Nepal, the Emiratis were in a must-win situation as only two teams earn a spot at next month's 10-team World Cup Qualifier in Zimbabwe which gets them one step closer to the 2019 World Cup in England.
The bottom-two will be relegated to Division Three.
With that in mind, Rohan Mustafa on winning the toss, opted to take first strike, but he and Ashfaq Ahmed were sent back to the pavilion with the UAE score on 12.
Ghulam Shabber and Rameez Shahzad steadied the innings with a 72-run partnership but Shahzad departed after scoring 20.
Shabber continued to play aggressively and with little support from Ahmed Raza (15), Adnan Mufti (11) and Mohammad Naveed (11), he went on to score 62 from 105 balls which contained seven boundaries.
However a target of 160 should have been a cakewalk for Oman but despite a solid opening wicket stand between Jatinder Singh (51) and Aqib Ilyas (20) the rest crumbled against some outstanding bowling from man of the match Naveed who had figures of 6.5-2-8-3. He was backed well by Imran Haider (3-31) and Ahmed Raza (2-16).
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