Gyanendra Malla, the vice-captain of Nepali national cricket team, made his debut for Nepal against Namibia in March 2006.
It’s been 13 years since he is serving for Nepali cricket, as Right-Handed batsmen and occasional wicket-keeper.
Malla was a part of Nepal U-15 and Nepal U-19 before entering the senior team. Gyanendra Malla was the part of U-19 cricket world-cup 2006 in Srilanka, where he scored 145 runs in six innings.
Gyanendra Malla had played an excellent inning of 45 runs against South Africa leading the team for victory for the very first time against South Africa in the same world-cup.
Gyanendra Malla had a good time in List-A career as he had 1047 runs in 43 matches. Similarly, in T20s he has 586 runs in 40 matches with the strike rate of 96.06.
Gyanendra Malla had played 6 ODIs matches scoring 143 runs and played 17 T20Is matches with 202 runs in his list.
Recently, he faced a lot of flak for his snail-like batting in his last few T20Is and ODIs. A few years back, he was known for his classical and amazing batting skills but these days it seems like his era has ended.
We are not saying that he is a liability to the team; he had played many match-winning innings for Nepal. We all are well known about his partnership with captain Paras Khadka in the field in many innings. He is one of the strongest pillars of Nepali cricket.
It’s not like there aren’t replacements. Pawan Saraf, Anil Shah are some emerging player of Nepal who can fit in his place for the betterment of the team. Yes, as emotional fans, we want a senior and established player in the team as Malla. But then, sentimentalism shouldn’t come in the way.
Gyanendra Malla is running his own cricket Academy in Lalitpur named as Kathmandu Cricket Training Center‘ from which he may produce many emerging players for Nepal. His time is to motivate and contribute many players for Nepali cricket and should step-down from the team.
