Powered by several imported players from India and Pakistan, the hosts, who won the toss and opted for batting, hit 334 runs in 50-overs in the first innings, which saw Ram Raushan Sharan hit a century with 111 runs at the AZ Group Cricket Oval.

In the second innings, Malaysia’s team captain Faiz Noor scored beyond half a century with 78 runs, but that was not enough to help the national team chase Cambodia as they ended the match, which lasted almost seven hours, with 245 runs in 40.1 overs.

Commenting on today’s match, Faiz said he was gutted with today’s performance as they missed out the chance to retain gold for Malaysia.

“A rather bad and very disappointing defeat. It can be said that our performance when bowling was quite bad to the point of giving up 334 runs to Cambodia, where we know their players performed well in the final.

“We did expect (a good) performance by the Cambodian players because they have some imported players who have played at the highest level before, so credit goes to the hosts for performing better than us,” he told Bernama.

Asked whether his team would protest on the host’s ‘tactics’ of using imported players, the 35-year-old batsman said it was beyond their control.

As such, he vowed to make amends by performing much better and bat to gold in their second final, this time in the men’s T20 event against the Group B champion, slated to be held this Thursday.

Malaysia emerged as the first champion in 50-overs the last time cricket was contested in Kuala Lumpur 2017.

Last Thursday, the Malaysian side thumped Thailand by eight wickets to top Group A with four points in the men’s T20 action.

Meanwhile, Thailand pipped Indonesia by three wickets to bag bronze in the men’s 50-overs bronze medal match yesterday.