It was after the Kenya game that Nepal began to believe. It is 2013 and the Rhinos are in Abu Dhabi for the ICC World T20 qualifier.

Sixteen teams, two groups of eight, with just four granted entry to the promised land - the 2014 T20 World Cup in Bangladesh. That Nepal were at the qualifier, with a chance of making the cut, was in itself a miracle. This was a team that just three years prior had been competing in Division Five of the ICC World Cricket League, against the likes of Fiji and Jersey. This was just their second ever appearance at an ICC qualifying event.

Things looked bleak at the innings break, with Kenya having put up 182. Incidentally, 180 was something of a textbook figure for Nepal in chases. It was the target they always set themselves in practice games, but one they usually never managed to hit.

What didn't work in rehearsal came off on stage in Abu Dhabi. A fighting fifty from captain Paras Khadka took the equation to 20 from eight balls before allrounder Sharad Vesawkar came out swinging and hit three sixes to take Nepal over the line.

Riding high on momentum, Nepal proceeded to defeat Papua New Guinea and Bermuda, and eventually sealed qualification with another last-ball win against Hong Kong.

Football was the dominant sport in Nepal, but by the time the players returned from Abu Dhabi, that seemed to have changed. A euphoric victory rally through the streets of Kathmandu was organised to welcome them back, with flags flying. The vehicle the players were in was covered with marigold garlands, and fans smeared holy vermillion powder on the cricketers. A fitting moment to mark cricket's consecration in the country.

For a brief period in March 2014, the prime minister's office instructed the electricity authority to not load-shed when the cricket team was in action at the World Cup. It was a Holi miracle

"The passion that we had all of a sudden became a bigger responsibility for every one of us," Khadka said, reflecting on those heady days.

"Everybody had to now be answerable in one way - not that we were questioned as such. We have always been backed by our fans, and all of a sudden we came back from the qualification of the World Cup and the whole country started to recognise us, recognise this sport."

With raised profiles comes a raised bank balance and the Nepal government pledged to award each member of the team one million Nepali rupees (about US$10,000 then). Corporates too got in on the act and offered players stipends.

"There [was] obviously a bit of financial security to the players, some form of money that comes into your bank account," Khadka said. "And although that's not a motivating factor, it gave us a small sense of security. Then, the boys started pushing harder."

Nepal's World Cup campaign kicked off on the eve of the Hindu festival of Holi in 2014. They played Hong Kong in their first game, where batting first, they posted 149 before proceeding to skittle their opponents out for 69. Khadka took the wicket of opener Irfan Ahmed with the first ball of his T20I career.

Earlier in that game he had scored an important 41, and he was the top scorer for Nepal in their next game, against Bangladesh, but it wasn't enough to prevent an eight-wicket thrashing. In their final group game, they registered a nine-run victory over an Afghanistan side that featured the likes of Najibullah Zadran and Mohammad Nabi.

Under Khadka, Nepal won 14 of 33 white-ball internationals between 2014 and 2019, including two T20 World Cup games Seb Daly / © Getty Images

Two wins out of three and missing out on qualification for the final round only on net run rate - Nepal's campaign was seismic. The magnitude of the achievement and what playing in the World Cup meant to Nepal was best captured by Rhinos fan Jeevan's comment on ESPNcricinfo's ball-ball-ball commentary for their tournament opener. With Nepal having reduced Hong Kong to 64, he wrote in: "Thanks to Nepal Electricity Authority, we are not having our regular power cuts [and can] watch the first ever World Cup match win of Nepal."

He was referring to Nepal's acute electricity crisis between 2008 and 2016 that resulted in power outages of up to 14 hours a day. Students struggled to do their homework, lift service was erratic in hotels, offices without inverter power turned to calculators in place of Excel, and central heating became a luxury - harsh for a country in the Himalayas.

The dent it made in the economy was severe - in those eight years Nepal's GDP lost a staggering $11 billion because of lack of adequate power, the World Bank said.

But for a brief period in March 2014, the prime minister's office instructed the electricity authority to not load-shed when the cricket team was in action at the World Cup. It was a Holi miracle.

The images of people glued to TVs in squares all around the country moved Khadka. "When I saw these photos, I was like, 'Wow cricket is now becoming big,'" he said.

"When we came back after the World Cup, the reception that we got, the way the country responded… everybody who was a part of Nepal cricket understood that we were now in a position where we are getting recognised for the very first time in our lives as sportspeople, as cricketers.

"I would like to thank that consultancy for sending in all the wrong documents. There are certain things destiny has in store for you. Forme, it was written in the stars" Khadka on having his Australian student visa rejected

"For most of our people who go to Dubai or Qatar or different parts of the world, there were [other] teams that they always used to watch - whether it's an India-Pakistan match or a Sri Lanka-Pakistan. But all of a sudden you had Nepal representing [them] and a new set of heroes. That also, I'm sure, made a lot of people feel that now there's a connection, that anything is possible.

"These are some of the things that still give me so much pleasure, that we could give this ray of hope, we could give happiness to people just by playing this game."

Nepal's presence at the 2014 World Cup launched Khadka into superstardom in the country. As the face of Nepalese cricket, he often had to resort to wearing a mask in public back then to avoid being spotted.

In the years to come, his legend only grew. Go through the modern history of Nepal cricket and you'll find Khadka's fingerprints all over.

The first time ODI status was achieved? Under Khadka's captaincy in 2018. First ever win in ODIs? Khadka scored a fifty. First-ever bilateral series win? Khadka made Nepal's maiden ODI hundred in the decider. First-ever T20I series win? Khadka scored 29 in 14 balls to set Nepal on their way in the reduced ten-over decider. First Nepalese to score a T20I century? You know who.

Last year was a seminal one for Nepal. They made their first Asia Cup appearance, scored the highest ever T20I team total, at the Asian Games, and sealed qualification to the 2024 T20 World Cup. Rohit Paudel, the man who captained Nepal through these waves of success, decided to pursue cricket as a career because of Khadka.

Football has traditionally been the most popular sport in Nepal, but the national team's entry into the 2014 T20 World Cup boosted cricket's popularity in the Himalayan nation Ian Hitchcock / © ICC/Getty Images

Paudel hails from the village of Buddhabasti in the west of Nepal. His exposure to the game was restricted to tennis-ball games with his brother, but watching Nepal compete at the 2014 World Cup awakened in him a desire to represent the country. He moved to Kathmandu to join a cricket academy, and within four years made his international debut.

It isn't hyperbole to say Nepal cricket's ascent would have been impossible without Khadka.

It's a journey that nearly didn't take off.

It is 2008 and the Rhinos are in Guernsey for the ICC World Cricket League Division 5.

Two out of the 12 teams will progress to Division 4, the next step in the journey to the 2011 World Cup in India.

Nepal, who at the time were still two years out from their first major championship win, went unbeaten through the group stage before coming unstuck against Afghanistan in the semi-final.

In the aftermath of their win over USA in the third-place playoff, coach Roy Dias pulled Khadka aside and offered him the captaincy.

"If you ask me 'Was there a formula as a team?' The answer is, no. It was just getting up every single time you were down and pushing each other to win matches one after another" Khadka on dealing with defeat in Associate cricket

It was a massive amount of trust to put in a 20-year-old, but Khadka was also the obvious choice. By then he had already spent four years with the senior team, and the previous year had been named vice-captain. Just two months prior, he had captained Nepal at the Under-19 World Cup in Malaysia, where they had mounted a run to the final of the Plate Championship - a playoff tournament for the teams eliminated early. Amazingly, that had been Khadka's third appearance in a U-19 World Cup; he was past 20 at the time of the 2008 tournament but was allowed to play owing to a special concession made by the ICC for Associate teams.

He had vice-captained the side in the 2006 tournament, where they won the Plate Championship after defeating a New Zealand side that featured Martin Guptill and Tim Southee in the final.

And yet, Khadka turned down Dias' offer because he had plans to leave Nepal to study in Australia.

"It was for a better career, it's as simple as that," he said. "Because playing cricket would not give you anything [in Nepal] then. So you just thought to study and make a career out of your education.

"It was about playing some form of cricket in Australia as well. It wasn't about giving up cricket. The plan was obviously to prioritise education and then cricket came after that."

That wasn't the first instance in Khadka's career where education had trumped cricket. After the 2004 U-19 World Cup he received a first call-up to a senior team camp but failed to report there the first couple of days. Riddled by self-doubt, he thought he'd be better off focusing his energies on becoming an engineer or architect.

Nepal pose for photos after finishing as runners-up in the 2008 Under-19 World Cup Plate final. Khadka (in cap, front row, centre) was the team's captain Stanley Chou / © Getty Images

"But then my family were the ones who actually forced me. [They said] you've already played for U-15, played U-17 [and] U-19 in a space of three years. So you have to go report to the senior team and see how it goes.'"

Not only did his family keep him in the sport, they also played a role in getting him into it. His father's and grandparents' interest in the game rubbed off on him as a child in Kathmandu. Khadka spoke of growing up watching India-Pakistan matches, and has vivid memories of Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana taking the world by storm in 1996. His father, who runs a hospitality management business, would play cricket with his friends. Watching those games furthered the young Khadka's infatuation with the sport.

"I was built, in a way, like in that movie 3 Idiots, where they say - this kid will become something. 'Mera beta kuch banega,'" he said.

It's not hard to see why his family felt that way. Khadka was academically brilliant and athletically gifted. He played for all of his school's sports teams and even trialled for Nepal's U-14 football team. Growing up, he played more basketball than cricket and was good enough to receive a call-up to the senior national basketball team.

It felt like he was earmarked for sporting success, but in 2008 he felt cricket was not the sport he would succeed at. After returning from Guernsey, Khadka left his Australia visa application in the hands of an education consultancy and whisked himself off to play a domestic tournament.

To his shock, he was denied a visa.

"I thought it was the end of the world," Khadka laughed.

"You put [in] so much effort, and everybody was getting visas then, and all of a sudden… I thought, 'Why did this happen?'

"I told them, please stay back. The kind of hard work that our generation and the generation before has put in, at least there is a platform for this generation to sustain themselves" Khadka on convincing current Nepal players not to emigrate

"When I look back, I'm very fortunate and would like to thank that consultancy for sending in all the wrong documents. There are certain things destiny has in store for you. For me personally, when I look back at all of these years, it was written in the stars."

The talent drain in Associate cricket due to the unsustainability of the game as a career option remains a problem. And it's one that has only become more acute over the years, not less, as one might think. According to the ICC's revenue-distribution model for 2024-2027, the 94 Associate nations stand to earn about $67.5 million per year of the $600 million annual pool.

Khadka's decision to forego opportunities in cricket (twice) was in keeping with the trend in Nepal cricket at the time. Numerous cricketers from the U-19 2006 Plate Championship-winning squad, including captain Kanishka Chaugai, moved abroad soon after that tournament.

When the team achieved ODI status for the first time in 2018, Khadka received messages from some of those team-mates who had moved abroad, saying, "I wish I'd never left."

It's 2018 and the Rhinos are playing Canada in the ICC World Cricket League Division Two in Namibia.

A win for either side will secure them a spot at the qualifier tournament for next year's ODI World Cup, in Zimbabwe the following month, and give them a shot at attaining ODI status. The stakes are higher for Nepal, as a loss means demotion back into Division Three.

Batting first, Canada posted 194 and in response Nepal stumbled, and at 144 for 9 in the 43rd over, looked about to crash out. Canada's substitute fielders were on the boundary rope, a flag in hand, ready to run onto the field. But all jumping the gun did was give them a front row seat to Karan KC's fireworks.

Karan KC is hoisted up on his team-mates' shoulders after the thrilling one-wicket win over Canada that took Nepal to the 2018 World Cup Qualifier © Peter Della Penna

The Nepal fast bowler, along with an injured Sandeep Lamichhane, launched an astounding rearguard that left Nepal needing eight from the last over.

The first four balls were inch-perfect yorkers that went for no runs. Eight needed off two.

It looked like the Canada subs would get their cardio after all.

The next ball, Karan KC hooked a six over cover. Two needed off one.

The bowler, Cecil Pervez, faltered and bowled a wide.

There were two scoreboards in the ground, one of them inaccurate - which was the one the Nepal team read, leading them to run onto the pitch, thinking they had won. They then made a hasty retreat back to the dressing room and sat in the positions they'd been sitting in earlier.

There was no anti-climax: Karan KC drove through midwicket and sealed Nepal's progress to the World Cup qualifier.

"There were tears of joy, there were tears of achievement," Khadka said about the moment.

"Once that qualification happened. I somehow basically believed that when we went to Zimbabwe, we would get ODI status because we had [already] obtained the most difficult part.

"I somehow managed to gather my thoughts [and] I went into the Canadian dressing room, because it was something very cruel for Associate cricket at that level, where the stakes are so high, that losing a game would mean that you'd have to wait for four years to qualify."

"For most of our people, there were [other] teams they always used to watch - India-Pakistan match or Sri Lanka-Pakistan. But all of a sudden you had Nepal representing [them] and a new set of heroes"

The circumstances of Associate cricket had often left Khadka in the depths, so the emotions in the Canada dressing room weren't alien to him. He had felt like it was the end of the world after failure at the 2010 Division 4 Cricket League in Italy. Losing every game in the 2015 World Cup qualifier had resigned him to the possibility that Nepal would never rise. He was still haunted by the 2016 T20 World Cup qualifier in Ireland, where after their opening game, Nepal won nothing else.

"If you ask me 'Was there a formula as a team?' The answer is, no, there is no formula. It was just getting up every single time that you were down. Waking up, gathering each other, shouldering each other, and then pushing each other to win matches one after another."

Khadka's premonition proved correct. At the World Cup qualifier, Nepal achieved ODI status for the first time in their history. He led from the front, finishing as his side's top scorer, with 231 runs across the six games.

The following year, he oversaw Nepal's first ever ODI series win, against the UAE, where he made a century in the decider, and while he only went on to play just ten ODIs, he hailed achieving ODI status as a "very big moment" for Nepal cricket.

It helped draw greater funding, provided more exposure to a better form of cricket, and played a role in building a national team today that is composed of "professionals being paid to play cricket," he said.

And to think that he had told his wife before the Division Two tournament in Namibia that he would retire if they didn't make it.

It's 2024 and Nepal will be competing in the T20 World Cup in the USA and the West Indies.

They are back on the world stage again after ten years but Khadka won't be there. In 2021, he retired from the sport, at 33.

Khadka coaches kids in Bulawayo, 2018. He continues to give back to Nepal cricket as well, now in an administrative role with a focus on the game's grassroots Nigel Roddis / © ICC/Getty Images

Khadka speaks of reaching a point in his career where he felt too tired to even pick up a bat. The thrill was gone. He thought Nepal cricket would be better served by his talents off the field than on it.

In September 2023 he was elected secretary of the Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN), where, after more than a decade spent helping Nepal cricket scale new heights, he has turned his attention to the base. Governance and grassroots were the words Khadka brought up most often as he outlined his ambitions to make CAN one of the best run sporting institutions.

His links with the current crop of cricketers are strong. In early 2023, some members of the squad approached him for advice. They were thinking of leaving Nepal and moving abroad.

"I told them, please stay back," Khadka recalled.

"I said, the kind of hard work that our generation and the generation before has put in, at least there is a platform for this generation to sustain themselves."

"So putting them into that mindset of not leaving Nepal was something I had to talk to a few cricketers [about], and also [during my] playing days, we had to get hold of some of our cricketers to somehow hold on to things [and stay in cricket and in the country]. Because again, the only thing we had was each other's backs - there's nothing else that we could rely upon."

The team stayed together and embarked on a run of 13 wins in 14 games, and went on to play in the Asia Cup for the first time.

He might be too tired to lift a bat now but Paras Khadka hasn't stopped batting for the Rhinos. In the precarious world of Associate cricket, Nepal can always rely on him having their back.

Shubi Arun is a writer with ESPN UK

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