Pokhara Avengers are the only franchise never to reach the NPL playoffs. Their captain is Nepal’s most destructive opener — three half-centuries on debut, a world first, a record debut stand with Aasif Sheikh, and six sixes in an over five months ago. Season 3 opened with the opposite: 21 off 17 with the bat, and 0/26 bowling the final over that lost the game, watching Dipendra Singh Airee reach fifty with a six off him and then hit the winning runs off him. Six games remain, under a new coach, with Shakib Al Hasan in the side, and the mission is the one Bhurtel named himself after Match 4: reach the playoffs for the first time.
One Game: 21 With the Bat, 0/26 With the Ball
Match 4 against Sudurpaschim Royals on 28 October started with Pokhara sent in. Sudurpaschim captain Dipendra Singh Airee won the toss and chose to field, and Pokhara posted 145/7. Bhurtel made 21 off 17 balls with 2 fours at a strike rate of 123.53, caught by Anil Kharel off Airee, the third wicket to fall at 68 in the 10th over. Mahedi Hasan made 32 off 21 with 4 fours and 1 six (one report credits those runs to Theekshana, which is wrong, since the scorecard gives them to Bangladesh opener Mahedi), and Arjun Gharti top-scored with 40 not out off 25, including 15 runs in the final over. Shakib made 14, Sadeera Samarawickrama 8 off 9, Dhananjaya Lakshan 11, and Bipin Khatri finished 5 not out, with 9 extras.
Sudurpaschim chased it in 16.5 overs, winning by 6 wickets with 19 balls left. Bhurtel bowled himself at the death: 2.5 overs, 26 runs, no wicket, at 9.17 an over. His final over went 1, 4, 0, 0, 6, and Airee reached his fifty with the six off Bhurtel before hitting the winning runs off him. Player of the Match was Airee for 51 not out plus 1/21, not Bhurtel — one live caption reads 50 off 36 for Airee, but the final scorecard reads 51 off 36. No catch, stumping or run-out is attributed to Bhurtel in Match 4 in any source checked, so this feature invents no fielding moment. His Match 4 story is the bat, and bowling himself at the death.
The Only Franchise Never to Reach the Playoffs
Pokhara finished eighth in 2024 and fifth in 2025, with three wins and four defeats in the second season, missing the playoffs both times. Bhurtel has captained in all three seasons: a Season 1 report from 15 December 2024 already calls him Avengers’ captain, in a match where he took 2 wickets, caught Bhandari off his own bowling via Bipin Khatri, and caught McMullen off Sagar Dhakal. Season 2’s squad list shows him as captain too, and Season 3 retained him as marquee domestic player and captain.
Against Sudurpaschim, Pokhara have now lost all three meetings: by 5 runs in 2024, by 18 runs in 2025, and by 6 wickets in Match 4 of 2026. In the 2025 meeting, Bhurtel made 53 off 32, Neesham 47 off 25 and Douthwaite 37 off 16, as Sudurpaschim set 193/7 and Pokhara finished 175/8. Two half-centuries in 2025 are the verified Season 2 batting bits; no full NPL career aggregate for Bhurtel exists anywhere reliable — the league’s own profile table lists his first two seasons as not publicly available — so this feature prints none. Season 3 setup is new around him: head coach Ajantha Mendis, the former Sri Lankan spinner, owner Nepal T20 Cricket Pvt. Ltd., overseas names Shakib Al Hasan, Mahedi Hasan and Mohammad Saifuddin from Bangladesh plus Chamika Karunaratne and Dhananjaya Lakshan from Sri Lanka, and a record domestic signing in keeper Arjun Gharti, who top-scored in Match 4.
The Opener Who Started With Three Fifties and Six Sixes
Kushal Bhurtel, born 22 January 1997 in Butwal, Rupandehi, is a right-handed opening batsman and leg-break googly bowler, 29 in Season 3. T20 international debut came on 17 April 2021 against Netherlands at Kirtipur: 62 off 46 balls with 5 fours and 5 sixes, named Player of the Match in a nine-wicket win, after being caught off Vivian Kingma in the first over and reprieved by a no-ball. With Aasif Sheikh, who made 54 not out off 38, he shared a record 116-run opening stand in 12.3 overs, breaking Paras Khadka and Gyanendra Malla’s 108 against Bhutan from December 2019. Three consecutive half-centuries in his first three T20 internationals made him the first player in T20 international history to do so; the second was 61 not out against Malaysia in a 102-run stand with Aasif’s 42, and the third fifty’s score is single-sourced, so it is not printed here. ODI debut followed on 7 September 2021 against Papua New Guinea, the same day Aasif debuted, in a two-wicket win chasing 135.
First T20 international century came against Philippines on 19 February 2022 in the ICC T20 World Cup Global Qualifier in Oman: 104 not out off 61 balls. First ODI century came against Namibia on 13 February 2023: 115, with an ODI top score of 120 not out against USA. Then, five months before Season 3, came the record: 31 May 2026, Asian Games Men’s Qualifier at Singapore National Cricket Ground against China, in the 9th over off left-arm spinner Chen Zhuo Yue. Six sixes off six legal deliveries (sixes off the first five balls, then a wide, then a six off the next ball) for a 37-run over, the second most expensive over in international cricket. He finished 129 off 43 balls with 5 fours and 16 sixes as Nepal posted 313/2 and won by 221 runs, China bowled out for 92. He is the second Nepali after Airee, whose Qatar over came in 2024, and one of only six players in men’s T20 internationals to hit six sixes in an over, alongside Yuvraj Singh, Kieron Pollard, Airee, Visser and Bashir. One outlet calls him the fifth batter; against the wider record, that count is wrong. He was also in Nepal’s squads for the 2024 and 2026 ICC Men’s T20 World Cups. Aggregates conflict by snapshot date, so this feature prints only the dated 5 June 2026 snapshot: 78 T20 internationals for 2,240 runs at 32.46 with 3 hundreds and 14 fifties, top score 129, and 70 one-day internationals for 1,656 runs at 24.71 with 2 hundreds and 9 fifties, top score 120 not out. Debut-series colour from April 2021, usable only with its date, had him saying he played a pressure-free game on debut because he had worked really hard for the moment and did not want to miss the opportunity.
What Remains: A Comeback Starts on Sunday
Bhurtel’s own post-Match 4 words carry the mission statement. At the post-match presentation, he said the team believed they would make a comeback in the next match, and that he believed they had a good squad that could help them enter the playoffs this time. No Season 3 quote from coach Mendis has been published. Remaining fixtures are Match 9 against Janakpur Bolts on Sunday 1 November (5:00 PM), Match 13 against Lumbini Lions on Monday 3 November, Match 17 against Chitwan Rhinos on Friday 6 November, Match 19 against Karnali Yaks on Monday 9 November, Match 22 against Biratnagar Kings on Thursday 12 November, and Match 28 against Kathmandu Gorkhas on Sunday 15 November. Match 9 is the immediate next step, and the first chance to turn a captain’s worst over of the season into the start of the franchise’s first playoff run. Bhurtel is not to be confused with Kushal Malla, who captains Chitwan Rhinos and broke Paudel’s youngest-fifty record in February 2020.
FAQs
What did Kushal Bhurtel do in Match 4?
He made 21 off 17 balls, caught by Kharel off Airee, and bowled 2.5 overs for 26 runs without a wicket, including the final over in which Airee reached fifty and hit the winning runs off him. Player of the Match was Airee.
Has Pokhara ever reached the NPL playoffs?
No. Pokhara are the only franchise yet to reach the playoffs in either of the first two editions, finishing eighth in 2024 and fifth in 2025 with three wins and four defeats.
What is Bhurtel’s six-sixes record?
On 31 May 2026 against China in Singapore, he hit six sixes off six legal deliveries in the 9th over off Chen Zhuo Yue (sixes off the first five balls, a wide, then a six) for a 37-run over, finishing 129 off 43 balls. He is the second Nepali after Airee and one of only six players in men’s T20 internationals to do it.
What did Bhurtel say after Match 4?
He said the team believed they would make a comeback in the next match, and that he believed they had a good squad that could help them enter the playoffs this time.
