Kathmandu. Nepal has made a happy start to the SAFF U-20 Women’s Championship. Nepal made a spectacular start to the tournament by defeating Bhutan by a wide margin of 6-1 in the match held at the Bashundhara Kings Arena in Dhaka on Friday.

Purnima Rai scored four goals and Senu Pariyar scored two goals in Nepal’s victory. After taking a 3-0 lead in the first half, Nepal scored three more goals in the second half. Bhutan scored the only consolation goal in the second half.

Senu opened Nepal’s account in the ninth minute of the game with a spectacular goal from Barsha Oli’s pass. Then in the 18th minute, Purnima doubled the lead by scoring from the six-yard box on another pass from Barsha. Towards the end of the half, Senu scored his second personal goal, making Nepal 3-0 ahead in the first half.

At the beginning of the second half, Kelden Wangmo scored a goal for Bhutan in the 53rd minute, but Purnima scored her second goal a few minutes later to make the score 4-1. After that, she shone. Purnima, who completed her hat-trick in the 83rd minute, also scored her fourth goal in the 88th minute to seal Nepal’s victory.

Nepal also squandered a few more chances in the game. Sukriya Mia and Varsha Oli missed their chances to score, but the score could not be further increased.

With this win, Nepal has added 3 points in the championship. In the next match today, home team Bangladesh won 9-1 over Sri Lanka and topped the table. Although both Nepal and Bangladesh have 3 points, Bangladesh is ahead on goal difference.

Nepal will now play Bangladesh on Sunday. Four teams are participating in the tournament and the matches will be played on a double round-robin basis. All teams will play each other twice. At the end, the team with the most points will be declared the champion.