Sandeep Lamichhane will be playing for Worcestershire in Vitality T20 Blast 2021, one of the UK’s premier county cricket clubs confirmed on Thursday.
Lamichhane, who was the first Nepali cricketer ever to be signed up by a franchise in the Indian Premier League (IPL) back in 2018 when he played for Delhi Daredevils (now, Delhi Capitals), is currently among T20 cricket’s global superstars. The 20-year-old leg-spinner has been in the limelight since his exploits at the 2016 U-19 World Cup in Bangladesh.
Still very young in his career, Lamichhane has featured in 96 T20 matches so far and taken 125 wickets while bowling his overs at an economy rate of only 6.79.
Sandeep has played in many tournaments and gained a lot of experience in franchise cricket,
Worcestershire’s head coach, Alex Gidman, said in a statement issued by the club.
He’s a legspinner, which is a bit of mystery spin we believe we need in our squad in terms of balance, so we are ecstatic with the signing.
We believe and trust that we have got an excellent squad of players ourselves, and it’s about adding to that squad, rather than getting players to replace players, and add to the balance of the team, which we think we’ve done well.
This is his first taste of playing in England, and I’m sure he will do well and have an enjoyable summer with us,
he added.
Lamichhane’s stint with Worcestershire will be his first in England, where he will be looking to make amends for being overlooked at the recent IPL auction in Chennai. The spinner, who was released by Dehli Capitals, went unsold despite having a base prize of only INR 40 lakhs.
Worcestershire, the T20 Blast champions back in 2019, have also confirmed Australia’s left-arm seamer Ben Dwarshuis as their other overseas signing for the coming season. Both Lamichhane and Dwarshuis will be available to play the entire group stage of the competition.
