Asia Cup Qualifier to be played in February

The qualifying round for next year’s Asia Cup will be held in Bangladesh in February 2016. The four-day event that begins on February 19 will feature Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Oman and UAE, who will battle it out to see who makes it into the Asia Cup, reports ESPNCricinfo.

The four teams will play each other in a round-robin format, with the team finishing on top after the league stage progressing to the main event, which will take place just before the World T20 in India.

The tournament, which is usually played in the 50-over format, will go ahead as a T20 tournament due to the upcoming World T20 and to give the Asian sides prepare for the World Cup.

The qualifying tournament was earlier slated to be played in the UAE, however, changes in calendar for the participating teams prompted the change of location.

Afghanistan, who qualified for the last Asia Cup, will go into the tournament as favorites following their historic ODI and T20 series wins over Zimbabwe.

2015 has been a landmark year for Afghanistan cricket as they capped off their first appearance in the World Cup, earlier in the year, by becoming the first associate side to beat an ICC Full Member nation in an ODI and T20 series following the triumph over Zimbabwe.

The side led by Asghar Stanikzai won the five-match ODI series 3-2 and the two-match T20 series 2-0. With the likes of Shapoor Zadran, Dawlat Zadran and Hameed Hassan in their ranks, the side coached by Inzamam-ul-Haq will be looking to not just qualify for the Asia Cup, but also cause an upset or two in the main event itself.

Among the other three sides, Oman and Hong Kong are evenly matched, while the United Arab Emirates look unlikely to go any further.

While the former two sides caused a couple of upsets in the World T20 Qualifiers, most notably by beating Afghanistan, UAE take their place only because they were scheduled to host the qualifiers for the Asia Cup.

Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Oman will all take part in the first qualifying round of the World T20 in March.