Asia Cup 2023: schedule, venues, fixtures, format, groups, teams, squads & all you need to know

The Asia Cup is a multi-nation limited overs cricket tournament contested between the top cricketing nations in the Asian continent. The tournament is a biennial event since 2009 and is administered by the Asian Cricket Council. Since 2016, the tournament switches its format between ODI and T20I every alternate edition and will be played this year in the fifty over format as a good opportunity for the teams to prepare for the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup to be played in India.

The tournament will be hosted by Pakistan Cricket Board with nine matches to be played in Sri Lanka and the rest in Pakistan as the Indian Cricket team won’t be able to travel to Pakistan for the fixtures. Multan Cricket Stadium, Multan, Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore are two venues to host matches in Pakistan and Pallekele International Cricket Stadium, Pallekele and R.Premadasa Stadium, Colombo are the other two venues to host matches in Sri Lanka.

Six teams are participating in the tournament this year with the five full member and one associate nations. Pakistan, Sri Lanka (host countries), India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are the full members. Associate nation Nepal has qualified for the tournament after winning the ACC Men’s Premier Cup which was also hosted by them in April-May 2023. 

There are six teams participating in the Asia Cup 2023 . The teams are

1. India
2. Pakistan
3. Sri Lanka 
4. Bangladesh 
5. Afghanistan
6. Nepal

The six teams are divided in two groups, A and B. Pakistan, India and Nepal comprise of Group A with Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Bangladesh to contest in Group B. Two teams from both groups will advance to the Super Four stage and the top two teams to finish in Super Four will qualify for the finals.

India and Pakistan are part of the same group (Group-A). They will play their first group match on 2nd September 2023 in Pallekele. India will play all their Group and Super Fours matches in Sri Lanka.

The tournament is set to begin on August 30 with the group A clash between hosts Pakistan and Nepal at Multan. The tournament final will be on September 17 in Colombo with overall 13 matches to take place. 

The Board of Control for Cricket in India and ACC chairman Jay Shah announced in October 2022 that the Indian team won’t be traveling to Pakistan for the marquee event citing the Indian government is not allowing the team to travel to Pakistan due to the political tensions between the two nations.

Squads are not declared as yet. We will update you as soon as we have the information.

India is the most successful team in Asia cup with seven titles (6 ODI and 1 T20I) with the latest one coming in 2018 which was also the last Asia cup edition to be played in the fifty over format. The current title holder is Sri Lanka who won the previous edition last year played in the T20 format in the UAE.

The prize money for the upcoming Asia cup is yet to be announced by ACC. However, the winning team received approximately INR 1,59,53,000 in the previous edition with the runner up taking INR 79,66,000 in their kitty.

Sanath Jayasuriya of Sri Lanka holds the record of most runs in Asia cup having scored 1,220 at an average of 53.04. In the list of active players, Rohit Sharma is leading the charts with 745 runs at an average of 46.56.

Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan leads the leading wicket takers chart with 30 scalps to his name. In the list of currently active players, Ravindra Jadeja (India) and Shakib Al Hasan (Bangladesh) both have 19 wickets to their name. Co-incidentally both are allrounders who bowl left arm orthodox spin.

Mohammad Azharuddin and MS Dhoni are the most successful captains in the Asia cup as the Indian team won twice in their leadership. Azharuddin took the team to glory in 1990 & 1995 whereas Dhoni was the skipper when India lifted the trophy in 2010 & 2016. The 2016 edition was played in the T20I format for the first time. Dhoni also captained the team in one game during the 2018 edition.

Dhoni is tied with Sri Lanka’s Arjuna Ranatunga winning most number of matches (9) as a captain. Pakistan’s Moin Khan has a 100%-win record as skipper (6 matches) as he led the team to their title in 2000 winning four games on the trot and. Rohit Sharma who was the captain in the 2018 edition also has five out of five wins. Pak’s Misbah-ul-Haq has the highest winning percentage (70) for a player who has captained at least 10 games in the Asia cup.

Pakistan has won two editions of Asia cup. They won their first edition in the year 2000 under Moin Khan’s captaincy. Under Misbah-ul-Haq’s captaincy Pakistan won the 2012 Asia Cup played in Bangladesh. In 2012 Asia Cup three teams had won 2 matches each in the group stage but a superior net run rate meant Pakistan met Bangladesh in the finals where they won a thrilling encounter by just 2 runs.

Team India’s spearhead in all the three formats Jasprit Bumrah was ruled out from all forms of cricket after a back injury and hasn’t played any competitive cricket after September 2022. He went through a back surgery in New Zealand and is bowling at full intensity as his rehab comes to the final stage in National Cricket Academy (NCA). The NCA will organize some practice games for players who have been ruled out due to injury or other issues. It is indicated that Bumrah might be picked for the T20I series in Ireland to take place in August to test his workload. India captain Rohit Sharma said that the management and leadership wants to give Bumrah more and more games before the World cup. It’s still unknown whether Bumrah will be fit for the Asia cup or not but the chances of him playing the multi nation tournament seems grim.