Asia Cup 2022 to be held in Sri Lanka in August-September, to be played in T20 format

The Asia Cup 2022 will be organized in Sri Lanka and the tournament will be played between August 27 and September 11 in a T20 format, it is learnt. The six-team tournament will be preceded by the Qualifiers, which get underway from August 20.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned decision was taken in Colombo on March 19, at the Annual General Meeting of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) – the governing body of the tournament – which also decided unanimously to extend the tenure of Jay Shah as the ACC President and the executive board and committees until the 2024 AGM. Another key decision taken at the AGM includes the promotion of the Qatar Cricket Association from an associate member to full-time.

Asia Cup, a biennial event, was last played in 2018. The tournament was cancelled by the ACC in 2020 thanks to the disruptions caused in the cricket calendars due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Following that, the Council zeroed in on the June-July window in 2021 to conduct the tournament, but those plans were dashed again owing to the pandemic. Meanwhile, Pakistan, who were originally set to host the 2022 edition, will now play hosts for 2023.

The 2022 edition will see six teams – India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and a Qualifier – taking part. The Qualifier spot will be up for grabs between UAE and Kuwait (progressed from the 2020 ACC West Region T20) and Singapore and Hong Kong (progressed from the 2020 ACC Eastern Region T20).

The tournament, which was first played in the year 1984, has seen 14 editions hitherto, with India easily being the most dominating side, having won as many as seven titles (1984, 1988, 1990/91, 1995, 2010, 2016 and 2018). India are followed by Sri Lanka, who have five tournament wins – 1986, 1997, 2004, 2008 and 2014, whereas Pakistan have won the remaining two editions, those of 2000 and 2012.

2022 edition will be the second time after 2016 that the tournament will be played in a T20 format. Ideally, the 2020 edition was earmarked as the precursor to the T20 World Cup in the same year, which itself was postponed eventually to 2021 and moved out from India to the United Arab Emirates due to the pandemic situation.