UDAYBIR Walia’s Player-of-the-Match performance helped Canada take 13th place with a win over UAE in the play-off at Potchefstroom.

Walia came in at No. 8 and made an unbeaten 42 as he put together an unbroken 86-run stand with Harmanjeet Singh Bedi to rescue his team after they’d fallen to 93 for 6 in a chase of 175. Earlier in the day, Walia, bowling for the first time in the tournament, took 3 for 16 to close UAE’s innings after medium-pacer Akhil Kumar and off-spinner Gurjot Gosal shared five wickets to restrict UAE.

Scores: Canada Under-19s 179 for 6 (Walia 42*, Bedi 40*; Mukherjee 4-62) beat UAE Under-19s 174 (Sharafu 65*, Walia 3-16; Kumar 3-37) by four wickets

1. Aravind, Ansh Tandon and KP Meiyappan all got into the 20s for UAE around Alishan Sharafu, who came in at 70 for 4 and was unbeaten on 65 by the end of the innings after Canada had elected to field. In response, Canada lost wickets regularly, four of them to off-spinner Rishabh Mukherjee, who finished the tournament with eight wickets in his last two matches.

But little damage came from the other ends as Walia and Bedi saw Canada through.

Meanwhile, a five-wicket haul by Ifeanyichukwu Uboh helped Nigeria to their first win in the Under-19 World Cup, beating Japan by eight wickets.

Scores: Nigeria Under-19s 116 for 2 (Runsewe 56) beat Japan Under-19s 115 all out (Uboh 5-23) by eight wickets.

His efforts brought the opposition down from 81 for 3 to 115 all out which then set up opener Sulaimon Runsewe to score a half-century and close the game out with 164 balls to spare.

Japan have not won any of their games in this tournament and have not put up a total above 120. They looked good for it with Shu Noguchi doing his best to stick to the crease, but his wicket for 31 off 77 balls caused a seven-wicket collapse for only 34 runs.(ESPN Cricinfo).