From Kathmandu Valley to the top of the world. Again.

You only get one chance to make a first impression, and Nepal certainly left an indelible one during their debut on cricket’s big stage.

Back in 2014, the national team from the Himalayan nation, which is between India and China, played for the first time at a T20 World Cup.

Their stay was only brief, yet the images they created inside a few days in Dhaka remain vivid. And not even those from the matches themselves, where Nepal claimed fine wins over Hong Kong and Afghanistan.

Briefly, the world of sport was captivated by scenes of a cricket frenzy in a country only hitherto known to many for Everest, Sherpas and Gurkhas.

Pictures of a mass of humanity blanketing Kathmandu Durbar Square, the world heritage site in the centre of the capital, transfixed by projections of cricket matches fizzed around cyber space.

Even the sport’s famously inward-looking authorities took note. All this passion for the game in a new territory could be just the boost needed for their mission to spread the game beyond its established borders.

“Those particular images of Durbar Square, I don’t just remember them, I have them saved on my computer,” says Andrew Leonard, who started working in the International Cricket Council’s digital department shortly after that World Cup.

“We used them extensively in our ICC material to show off how much the game was growing.”

Whether those scenes will be repeated when Nepal finally scratch their 10-year itch and return to the World Cup stage on Tuesday remains to be seen.

It will likely be vastly different to what went before, even if all 8,000 tickets for their tournament opener are already accounted for.

They will be playing the Netherlands in a former baseball ballpark recently repurposed for cricket in Dallas, Texas. The players have gone through 11 time zones to reach there.

It is a world away, geographically and figuratively, from what it was like a decade back, or even compared to last November, when they clinched qualification at the UAE’s expense.

The deciding match was played in Mulpani, a district of Kathmandu, whose sharply undulating terrain and dense population cuts a stark contrast to what awaits in the Dallas suburb of Grand Prairie.

The scene back then defied simple description. Because of botched fixture scheduling, the seminal match of the tournament for the beloved host team was played at the smaller of the capital city’s two international cricket grounds.

Fair to say, demand for tickets outstripped supply. Only 3,500 were made available. Police and the Cricket Association of Nepal issued pleas for fans to stay at home and watch the game on TV. There was little chance that would happen, given what was at stake.

Mulpani was spruced up as best the organisers could manage at short notice. A temporary stand for VIPs and players’ families was erected overnight.

Beyond the fence, a field in which cows usually graze was sectioned off for ticket holders. A mobile toilet van was parked inside, which was about the sum total of the facilities for spectators.

Police checkpoints were set up at the entrance to the two main roads leading to the ground, in a bid to create an extended outer perimeter.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Leonard says. “It led to mass panic across the city because most people thought Mulpani wasn’t going to be capable of getting close to hosting it, given the demand for what was, in essence, a one-off shoot-out to get back to a first World Cup in 10 years.

“The scale of anticipation across the country was truly insane. I heard of people of Nepalese origin flying in from Australia for it. I usually only arrive 90 minutes before the start of a day’s play, but got there stupidly early that day, and it was already chaos.”

The trickle of supporters to the ground exceeded the 3,500 specified ticket-holders way ahead of the start time. It had flooded to at least double that by the time Karan KC, Nepal’s new-ball bowler, sent down the first delivery to Muhammad Waseem, the UAE captain.

There was a surge on the gate. Others held on to precarious perches on roofs of neighbouring cafes and on staircases leading up the sides of houses. Hundreds of metres up the hill, fans lined the streets even if they could barely see the players, let alone the ball.

“Because Nepalis are very innovative and things work differently across Kathmandu, they are used to finding ways around things,” Leonard says.

“Suddenly, little roads and agricultural ground became highways of people walking or on their motorbikes, trying to find some way of getting a vantage point for the game.”

The local authorities estimated there were 20,000 in the vicinity of the ground by the time victory – and a trip to the World Cup for the first time in a decade – was sealed. Leonard reckons that is a conservative figure.

His own role in the day has become somewhat revered in Nepal, too. Since leaving the ICC, the Irishman has pursued a career as a broadcaster.

It all started with an invitation to call the 2018 Everest Premier League, a T20 tournament in Kathmandu involving a number of overseas players, including his close friend Kevin O’Brien.

After getting his own gig to play, O’Brien, the former Ireland batter, asked the organisers if they needed his mate to help out with commentary. They took him up on the offer and in the six years since, Leonard has unexpectedly become the voice of Nepal cricket.

His celebrity has been further cemented before the World Cup in the US and the Caribbean. The opening of a song released by pop star – and fellow cricket obsessive – Tanka Timilsina, ahead of the competition includes Leonard’s emotional narration of the winning runs in that game against the UAE.

“The connection between me and Nepal was immediate,” Leonard says. “It is built around a shared obsession and passion for cricket.”

If further evidence of the country’s passion for the sport were needed, Timilsina’s is just one of six songs released by various Nepali artists to coincide with the World Cup.

It is unclear whether we will see similar images emerge from Durbar Square or elsewhere during this World Cup. Some matches will be played during office hours after all, and others during the early hours of the morning.

But one thing is for sure: A decade away from the big show has made the fans’ hearts grow fonder.

Nepal’s first trip to the global stage was a voyage of discovery for everyone. “They were all hungry to perform,” Pubudu Dassanayake, Nepal’s coach back then, says of his team of wide-eye World Cup rookies.

“The task we set inside the camp was to beat Afghanistan, and we managed that on the highest stage. Nepal had [only once, 10 years earlier] beaten Afghanistan before at any level of cricket.”

Afghanistan were in the process of charging up the world rankings in cricket, to the point that they were soon granted access to its most exclusive group. In 2017, they were given Test status.

Bangladesh already held that privilege, and playing against them made Nepal’s players feel as though they had made it.

“The memory of standing in the line up for the national anthem is really embedded in my mind,” said Sharad Vesawkar, one of the mainstays of Nepal’s 2014 side.

Vesawkar scored 40 against Bangladesh but his side were soundly beaten. Then, against the Afghans in the final pool match, he hit 37 in 32 balls to help set up a nine-run win.

“Luckily, I got some runs against both Bangladesh and Afghanistan,” Vesawkar says. “More so for Bangladesh, because we had been watching them on TV, and playing against them at the start, there were nerves.

“Slowly, I got off the mark, got to 10 or so, then felt in the groove. It felt there was not much difference between these guys and us. It felt comfortable.

“Against the Afghans it didn’t feel too different as we had been playing against them for a long time, since 2004. We knew their players.”

The wins against Hong Kong and Afghanistan were enough to give Nepal second place in their pool, but Bangladesh beat them to a place in the second round on run rate.

Even if they were heading home, it would be to a heroes’ welcome.

“It was unbelievable when we first saw the pictures of a projector being set up in the centre of the city at Kathmandu Durbar Square,” Vesawkar says.

“From then on, everything changed in Nepal. The support. The number of people watching the game. It felt really special. It felt like we had achieved something by playing cricket.”

Dassanayake, who is originally from Sri Lanka, was no stranger to fervent support for cricket. But even he was shocked.

“To be honest, I was just focusing on cricket,” the coach says. “I was trying to build the team and work hard with the team.

“But people were calling me and saying it was huge back at home. I got to know that streets had been closed and big screen TVs had been put up, with thousands of people watching the games on the street.

“When we are involved in the games, obviously we don’t see that, but we know it is big. When we landed, they put us in an open-top lorry and took us around Kathmandu.

“That time was crazy and I am sure they are going to have fun this time as well. Nepal is a special place because of their fans. And with the amount of talented young players they have as well, it is a great cricketing nation.”

With a promising young side, and the backing of a supporter base would be the envy of many a Test nation, that World Cup debut could have been the start of a long stay at the top level. Instead, they have been conspicuous by their absence for a decade.

The reasons have been many and varied. There was the ICC’s regressive decision to contract the 50-over World Cup to 10 teams. Asian cricket was already highly competitive, before a further limit was placed on the number of teams that could qualify for major events.

Also, the cricket administration in Nepal was frequently not fit for purpose in the years that followed. There were times when the governing body for the sport had its membership of the ICC suspended as a result. The team were permitted to play on, but had to do much of the organisation themselves.

And there was the impact of something far more significant than cricket. In April 2015, just over a year after that World Cup debut, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit the Kathmandu Valley.

In the initial tremor and aftershocks that followed, whole villages were flattened, and avalanches and landslides poured down mountains.

About 9,000 people died and more than 22,000 were injured. The UN reported that eight million people were directly affected by it.

“Earthquakes hit us hard twice in the span of one month,” Vesawkar says. “In the first one, I was in the lobby of the team hotel. I ran outside and it shook so hard I couldn’t even run when I was outside in the open. I fell down.

“The second time, I was at home. I had a broken ankle at the time but when the earthquake hit, I even ran with that. I didn’t even remember the pain. I ran to save my life.”

While the country focused on putting itself back together in the aftermath of disaster, the national cricket team had to attempt to prepare themselves for duty.

They realised their responsibility as national heroes. Thousands of people had been displaced to temporary shelters, with tent villages erected in many of Kathmandu’s few open spaces, which included a largely destroyed Durbar Square. The players from the national team made visits to many, to try to lift morale as best they could.

They knew well that success on the cricket field could help with that, too. Within three months of the first earthquake, they would be back in action during the qualification tournament for the next T20 World Cup.

Understandably, given the circumstances, they were underprepared. They struggled to just one win at that event in Ireland, and missed out on qualification.

“It was tough going,” Vesawkar says. “You didn’t know if it was going to shake again. Everything was haywire. Everyone was out of their houses.

“After a while, we had to go for our World Cup qualifiers in Ireland. We were the least prepared and weren’t able to perform well.

“As a team, we couldn’t deliver, despite having high expectations having played the last World Cup. That was a disappointment.

“We thought we could have given some happiness at that time of crisis, but it actually turned out the other way round. Everyone was even more disappointed because the team didn’t play well. It was tough going.”

The going remained tough in the years that followed but that failed 2015 campaign did at least have one lasting effect. Its significance is starting to take hold now.

For that competition, Dassanakaye enlisted the help of a coach he had befriended while on a previous tour of India.

Monty Desai arrived on a temporary remit to help the batters, and was gone again straight away after. But his brief interaction with the side had a lasting effect on him.

“In 2015, Pubudu brought me on board to work with him in Ireland,” Desai says. “We didn’t get the results, and I got to see closely the pressure the players in the dressing room take on because of the expectations of the country.

“There was raw talent. Not polished. But they had something.”

The best part of a decade later, Desai returned, this time as head coach. It is difficult to overstate the effect he has had. To use Leonard’s words, he has “completely rejuvenated the hopes of a nation”.

Nepal were on the brink of losing their ODI status when he arrived. Within a few months, he had seen them string together an unprecedented run of wins that confirmed their ODI status, took them to the final phase of 50-over World Cup qualifying in Zimbabwe, and a first trip to an Asia Cup.

That brought them fixtures against India, Pakistan and the West Indies. They did not manage a win against any of those cricket giants, but they had their chances against each of them.

Now they have three more fixtures to come against the Test-playing elite. That starts with Sri Lanka in Florida, then South Africa and Bangladesh in St Vincent.

Desai insists his players learnt much against West Indies, India and Pakistan last year. But the coach also acknowledges they will be giving away much in terms of experience to their opponents.

“The motivation is huge that we are in the World Cup,” Desai says. “If there is something we are building now, it is only going to be tested now.

“The pressure is going to be huge because of the expectations, but we have to embrace that and, at least, present what we know.

“We will be tested by the superior skills of teams that have played a lot more times than us in the competitive environment that is one level up.

“The challenge that associate countries face against each other versus what the Test nations face against each other, and the number of games they play, is very different.”

However they fare at the World Cup, their fortunes will be lived and breathed by about 30 million people, half the world away. Middle of the night or not, the fans will be watching.

“I was told a story by a guy from a rural area when they qualified this year, who said that when the same happened 10 years ago, they all had to go to the local hospital to watch the game as it was the only place with electricity during the World Cup,” Leonard says.

“The country has moved on in the 10 years since, but I expect the same fervour right across Nepal.”

And, according to Vesawkar, the class of 2024 have already made their country proud.

“When the guys qualified against the UAE in the semi-finals in Mulpani, it was a special moment,” Vesawkar said.

“I felt like we were reliving the moment through this team. It was a really happy moment. It is not possible to describe how good it felt.

“I was in the media centre doing a column when it happened. There were many past players from the team there, the management, and everyone was singing the victory song.

“I hope the guys do well in the World Cup, and I am really eager to watch it live.”