Asia Cup

This article is about the men's cricket tournament. For the women's cricket tournament, see Women's Asia Cup. For other uses, see Asia Cup (disambiguation).

Men's Asia Cup
AdministratorAsian Cricket Council
FormatODI and T20I
First edition1984
Latest edition2023
Tournament formatGroup stage and knockouts
Number of teams6
Current champion India (8th title)
Most successful India (8 titles)
Most runsSri Lanka Sanath Jayasuriya (1220)[1]
Most wicketsSri Lanka Lasith Malinga (33)[2]
Websiteasiancricket.org
Tournaments

The Asia Cup officially known as Men's Asia Cup, is the biennial Cricket tournament organised by the Asian Cricket Council (ACC). The competition is contested by Asian members' senior men's national cricket teams, determining the continental champion of Asia.[3] It was established in 1983 when the Asian Cricket Council was founded as a measure to promote goodwill between Asian countries being the only continental championship in cricket where the winning team becomes the champion of Asia. India are the defending champions after winning the 2023 edition.

The first edition was held in 1984 in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates where the council's offices were based until 1995. India boycotted the 1986 tournament due to strained cricketing relations with Sri Lanka. Pakistan boycotted the 1990–91 tournament due to strained political relations with India and the 1993 tournament was cancelled for the same reason. The ACC announced that the tournament would be held biennially from 2009 onwards. The ICC has ruled that all games played in the Asia Cup have official ODI status.

After downsizing the Asian Cricket Council in 2015, it was announced by the ICC that Asia Cup events from 2016 would be played on a rotation basis between One Day International and Twenty20 International format, on the basis of the format of upcoming world events. As a result, the 2016 event was the first event played in the T20I format and functioned as a preparatory tournament ahead of the 2016 ICC World Twenty20.

India, with eight titles (seven ODI and one T20I), is the most successful team in the tournament. Sri Lanka is the second most successful team, with six, while Pakistan have won two titles. Sri Lanka has played the most Asia Cups (16) followed by India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (15 each). India has been considered the best Asian team while Sri Lanka has historically been the second best.

  1. ^ "Most runs in combined format". ESPNcricinfo.
  2. ^ "Most wickets in combined format". ESPNcricinfo.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).