Pakistan to host Asia Cup 2020
Collected
|| Desk Report ||
Pakistan are set to host the Asia Cup in 2020. It has been a decade since they last hosted the Asia Cup on their home soil. This decision has been made in a meeting of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) held in Singapore on Tuesday.
The Asia Cup 2020 will be played in T20 format as it will coincide with ICC T20 World Cup, which will be held in Australia from October 18 to November 15. Asia Cup will be a preparation for the Asian sides as the tournament will take place in September just one month before the T20 World Cup.
In 2016, the Asia Cup was switched to T20 format because of coinciding with that year’s World T20 in India.
The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Ehsan Mani and Managing Director Wasim Khan attended the meeting, in which officials of the cricket boards of India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan were also present.
In the 15th edition of the tournament India will be defending their title as they had beaten Bangladesh in the 2018 final in the last ball. The first edition of Asia Cup was held in UAE in 1984. India have won this tournament record 12 times, Sri Lanka have won five times, Pakistan two times and Bangladesh and Afghanistan are yet to win this prestigious trophy.
International cricket has been intermittent in Pakistan since 2009 incident. Pakistan only hosted series against Zimbabwe, three World XI t20 match and a solitary t20 match against Sri Lanka [International] in this period of time. This Asia Cup will be a big leap towards bringing back cricket once again in Pakistan.
