After a splendid start Qatar suffered setbacks in their Group ‘A’ matches of the Cricket World Cup (CWC) Challenge League ‘A’ in Malaysia on Monday.

The CWC Challenge League is a competition for teams placed between 21 and 32 in the ICC rankings, and it serves as a preliminary qualifying round for the World Cup 2023 to be held in India.

Qatar won their first two matches, against Singapore and Malaysia, but went down to Canada by 115 runs in the third and lost to Denmark by 60 runs on Monday.

Earlier Qatar had defeated Singapore by 19 runs and Malaysia by three wickets.

Qatar faced a daunting target of 259 against Denmark whose top scorers were captain Hamid Ali Mazar Shah (93) and Freddi Klokker (80).

Zaheer Ibrahim picked up two wickets for Qatar, whose splendid fielding saw them effect two run outs.

Qatar lost a few early wickets and struggled in their chase. They were reduced to 48 for three and later 108 for five.

Even as the pressure mounted, Mohammed Rizlan single-handedly attempted to revive Qatar’s fortunes, but his effort of 63 went in vain as rest of the batsmen failed to rally around him.

Qatar were eventually bowled out for 198 in 43.4 overs.

Qatar now face Vanuatu, the small Pacific island country, in their final group match on Thursday.

The CWC Challenge League ‘B’ will be held in Hong Kong from November 25 to December 9 and will feature the same teams.

These preliminary qualifying tournaments will be held every year until 2022. Then the top two teams will join higher ranked teams in a play-off tournament from where two teams will get into the 2023 World Cup main draw.