Nepal stand between UAE and a place at T20 World Cup after Vriitya Aravind’s brilliance

Vriitya Aravind is only 19 years old. He is missing university lectures to play for UAE at the T20 World Cup Qualifier in Oman. It must be hoped he has years of representative cricket for the country left in him.

In which case, Ahmed Raza, the national team captain, is going to need a thesaurus. “I don’t have any more superlatives for him now,” Raza said after the teenage wicketkeeper dragged UAE into the Qualifier semi-finals via a dramatic final pool-match against Bahrain. “He is just a special kid.”

On Tuesday, the national team will go up against familiar rivals Nepal. The winners will earn a place in the final of the eight-team qualifier. More importantly, victory carries with it a place at the World Cup in Australia in October.

Right up until the final over of their run-chase against Bahrain, their unheralded Gulf neighbours, it appeared as though their hopes of a trip to the big show had been extinguished.

With six balls left of their final pool game, they needed 27 to win. More vitally, they required 12 to get them into the last four, with their student wicketkeeper on strike.

Aravind laced the first two balls from Shahid Mahmood for four. He scurried two with Mohammed Usman off the third. Then progress was sealed off the next.

“I wasn’t looking at the 12 - I was trying to win the game,” Aravind said of his final-over game plan.

“I felt like I played a bit too slow, which was why the team was in this situation. So I was thinking, 'Let me try and win this for the team'. It went six, four, double, and there was two centimetres in it at the end.”

Had the last ball not been hauled in by the boundary fielder, it would have gone to a Super Over. As it was, Bahrain won by two, but UAE still advanced.

“That was one of