Pacific / Papua New Guinea

Sport: PNG cricketers end Australian tour with ‘best performance’

12:38 pm on 16 February 2017

The Papua New Guinea cricketers have finished their Australian tour on a winning note, narrowly beating the ACT XI by three runs in their T20 clash in Canberra.

After being put into bat, the Barramundi's recovered from 34 for 3 to post 156 for 9.

Captain Assad Vala top-scored with 59 runs, including two massive sixes, while Mahura Dai chipped in with a quickfire 34 from 21 balls down the order.

In reply, Chad Soper snared the wicket of Aiden Blizzard off the first ball of the innings before Jono Dean and John Rogers put on 95 runs for the second wicket.

With ACT needing nine runs off the final over, John Reva restricted the hosts to just five.

PNG celebrate victory over the ACT XI. Photo: Cricket PNG

Coach Dipak Patel said it was their best performance on tour.

"We've improved every game that we've played on this tour and it's quite a pleasing way to sort of come along here and perform so well with bat and ball," he said.

"It's given us a little bit more confidence, a little bit more belief that we can come along and play these sort of high profile games and win so yeah, look, very pleasing."

PNG recovered from a difficult start with the bat. Photo: Cricket PNG

Dipak Patel said the manner is which they executed the win was especially satisfying.

"We've been working on certain plans with our batting so that was nice...although we didn't get the ideal start.

"In the past where we've sort of fallen back into our shell, and tried to scrape through a total, we were very positive in setting a decent total. A target of 150 was what we were expecting but getting those extra runs was a huge bonus.

"With the bowling, once again we started well but they came back hard at us in the middle stages but we recovered very well at the death."

PNG impressed in the field. Photo: Cricket PNG

The Barramundis opened their tour with a six run defeat to the New South Wales XI last Wednesday in a rain-affected one-day match.

PNG beat the NSW XI by four wickets in a T20 clash on Monday.

The Barramundis squad flies back to Port Moresby today, with their engagement against the UAE in Dubai in April.