Asia Cup is to played from 15th to 28th September with 6 teams and 2 stages. But could the scheduling and format have been much better?





The Schedule for Asia Cup 2018 has been finally announced. The tournament is to be held between 15th September to 28th September between 5 Teams in India, Pakistan, SriLanka, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and 1 team coming through Qualifier. Qualifiers will also be held in September prior to the main tournament and the participating teams will be Oman, Nepal, UAE, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. This time tournament will again revert back to ODI format after it was played in T20 format in the year 2016 in sight of match practice for World T20 Championship.





Main Tournament itself will be in 2 stages with both rounds to be held in round robin format. In 1st round, teams will be divided into 2 groups with 1st group consisting of India, Pakistan and a team from Qualifier and 2 group of Bangladesh, SriLanka and Afghanistan. 2 teams will qualify from each group to compete in Super 4 stage where again each team will play each other, then top 2 teams from group stage will face off in the final. This means that 2 teams can potentially face off against each other up to 3 times.





Continuous Game Days!

May be this is too much peeling off, but the schedule could have been much better. For Example, India are playing on continuous days on 18th and 19th sept which could have easily being avoided simply by shifting the Bangladesh-Afghanistan fixture from 20th to 19th and shifting 19th Sept India-Pakistan fixture to 20th. The fact that you have to play on continuous days in a 6 team tournament is obviously bad scheduling. Again a similar issue can arise on 20th and 21st sept matches. Bangladesh and Afghanistan play on 20th Sept but then again top 2 teams for group B has to play in 21st Sept games. If SriLanka qualifies as 1 team then it will still one of Bangladesh or Afghanistan have to play matches on continuous days. Also India qualifies from Group A, then they will be playing 3 matches in 4 days.

Potentially 3 games between 2 sides!

Next, why the teams in same group in 1st stage are asked to play again at Super 4 stage? (Like India and Pakistan who are in group A will face off again in Super 4 if they qualify). Instead, points could have simply carry forward from the Group stage which could have avoided 2 games and saved 2 days, which in turn could be used to give gap days to avoid consecutive game days for the teams as mentioned earlier. May be it was broadcaster's demand to increase the number of games. In that case they could have scrapped super 4 and have played all 6 teams among each other in group stage. In that format, 15 games in group stage would have been played and 16th would have been the final game between top 2 teams from group phase(in current format there are total of 13 matches).

Could there be more teams in Asia Cup?

Another issue I would like to raise is to include only 1 team from qualifiers. Instead, if 3 teams would have been included to create 2 groups of 4 teams, it would have been a great experience for those teams to play against the heavyweights. More so, since they do not get to play much against the likes of India, Pakistan or SriLanka. In probability these matches would have been one sided, but still it would have been a great moment for teams and a great experience, a step necessary to increase the foothold of cricket. World Cup has already rejected smaller teams, other tournament will need to take care of them.