Sri Lanka to host 8-nation U19 Asia Cup in Sep 2019

Sri Lanka will host the 8-nation U19 Asian Cricket Council (ACC) Asia Cup from Sep 05th – 14th, 2019. The tournament will be played in the traditional 50-overs format.

U19 team’s from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan will be joined by UAE, Nepal and Kuwait in the tourament. While UAE and Kuwait qualified from the western region T20 qualifiers held in UAE, Nepal qualified from the eastern region qualifiers held in Malaysia. Bangladesh hosted the 2018 edition of the tournament, which was eventually won by India U19.

Unlike the 2018 event, where the participating Associate members from the 2017 edition were given direct entry, the 2019 event will see both regional qualifiers taking place with team’s getting preparation and qualifying matches to build the U19 squads. As announced earlier by Asian Cricket Council during the unvieling of the calendar of events for 2019 and 2020, the three qualifiers from Western and Eastern regional qualifiers will qualify for both the editions of 2019 and 2020 in Sri Lanka and UAE respectively.

While exception was given to UAE on account of qualifying for the 2020 ICC U19 Cricket World Cup, the qualifying spots was increased in the Western qualifiers to two, enabling Kuwait also to qualify after reaching the finals of the tournament. Eastern qualifiers spot was reduced by one in 2019. However, for the 2020 edition of the ACC U19 Asia Cup in UAE, both Nepal and Hong Kong have qualified by reaching the finals of the Eastern qualifiers, while only one spot will be given to UAE from the Western region.

As per the groupings for the 2019 edition, Group A will consist of U19 team’s from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan & Kuwait, while Group B comprises of U19 team’s from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, UAE & Nepal. Top 2 team’s at the end of the single round-robin group stage will advance to the semi-finals of the tournament.

While India U19 and Bangladesh U19 were involved in a recently concluded U19 Tri-series in UK, Pakistan U19 concluded a 7-match series in South Africa. Sri Lanka U19 players took part in the national provincial U19 tournament, while ACC have granted permission to Nepal U19 for a practice tour in Sri Lanka ahead of the tournament.

Squads

India U19: Dhruv Chand Jurel (Captain), Suved Parkar, Thakur Tilak Varma, Nehal Wadhera, Arjun Azad, Shashwat Rawat, Varun Lavande, Salil Arora, Karan Lal, Atharva Ankolekar, Pankaj Yadav, Akash Singh, Sushant Mishra, Purnank Tyagi & Vidyadhar Patil

Pakistan U19: Rohail Nazir (Captain), Haider Ali, Aamir Ali, Abu Huraira, Adul Wahid Bangalzai, Akhtar Shah, Fahad Munir, Mohammad Aamir, Mohammad Abbas Afridi, Mohammad Basit Ali, Mohammad Haris, Mohammad Irfan Khan, Mohammad Wasim JR, Naseem Shah & Qasim Akram

Afghanistan U19: Farhan Zakhail (Captain), Sedeq Atal, Asif Musazai, Rahmanullah Zadran, Abdullah Naib, Islam Zazai, Nangyal, Shafiq Ghafari, Jamshid, Noor Ahmad, Abdul Rahman, Fazal Haq, Abid Tani, Mohammad Ishaq & Ahmad Zahir Pathan

Nepal U19: Rohit Kumar Paudel (Captain), Rit Gautam, Pawan Sarraf, Mahamad Asif Sheikh, Sundeep Jora, Bhim Sharki, Hari Bahadur Chauhan, Kushal Malla, Rasid Khan, Kamal Singh Airee, Sagar Dhakal, Khadak Bahadur Bohara, Surya Tamang & Lokesh Bahadur Bam

Sri Lanka U19: Nipun Dananjaya (Captain), Kamil Mishara, Navod Paranavithana, Thaveesha Abhishek, Ravindu Rashantha De Silva, Ahan Wickramasinghe, Avishka Tharindu, Rohan Sanjaya, Ashain Daniel, Sandun Mendis, Kavindu Nadeeshan, Yasiru Rodrigo, Dilshan Madushanka, Chamindu Wijesinghe & Amshi De Silva

Bangladesh U19: Akbar Ali (Captain), Tanzid Hasan, Parvez Hossain, Anik Sarker, Mahmudul Hasan, Tawhid Hridoy, Shamim Hossain, Shahadat Hossain, Rakibul Hasan, Mirttunjoy Chowdhury, Shoriful Islam, Tanzim Hasan, Mohammad Shahin, Minhazur Rahman & Ashraful Islam

Kuwait U19: Abdul Sadiq (Captain), Aamir Ali, Abdul Rehman, Abdullah Zaheer, Ahmed Majed, Akhil Sajeev Nair, Faez Qureshi, Gokul Sunil Kumar, Govind Sunil Kumar, Hamoud Jandu, Meet Bhavsar, Saem Mohammad, Umer Abdullah, Usman Mohammad & Zeeshan Jilani

UAE U19: Kartik Meiyappan (Captain), Ansh Tandon, Mohammed Haider Shah, Vritiya Aravind, Alishan Sharafu, Osama Hassan, Mohammed Farazuddin, Ashwant Valthapa, Sanchit Sharma, Akasha Tahir, Tasin Rehman, Anand Kumar, Aaron Benjamin, Rishab Mukherjee & Niel Lobo

ACC U19 Asia Cup 2019 Schedule (Score links in individual matches in the list) – Playing XI to be updated before match start

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