United Arab Emirates lived up-to their billing as the pre-tournament favourites in the ICC WorldT20 Asia “A” qualifiers as they remained unbeaten in the past 1 week to emerge as the winners of the tournament and also qualify for Asia regional finals. Joining them also in the regional finals, Qatar, finished runners-up as they were no match for UAE on the day with the Emirates team winning the final by 9 wickets.
But the most compelling story of the tournament came in the 3rd/4th play-off match as host’s Kuwait knocked out Saudi Arabia to clinch the final qualification spot from the sub-regional event into the Asian regional finals. In a tense thriller played out between the team in a reduced 18-overs-a-side match, Kuwait bowlers did brilliantly well to defend 104 runs by defeating Saudi Arabia by 5 runs.
What is more important is that by virtue of qualification, both Qatar and Kuwait will now play official T20I status matches in the Asia regional finals along with three other Associate countries, who will qualify from Asia “B” qualifiers to be held in Malaysia later this year.
It was once again “So Close yet So Far” for Saudi Arabia as they lost their chances to qualify for ICC World Cricket League Division 5 in 2017 when Qatar edged past them on the final day of the qualifying event on better net run-rate. In Kuwait, however, they came up short and will have themselves to blame for the debacle. Kuwait’s interim coach Herschelle Gibbs will take this result any given day as his coaching stint with the team has resulted in success.
What was even more surprising that Saudi Arabia lost only 4 wickets in their entire innings but could not accelerate in the final overs!!
In the final, UAE had multiple match-winners with Mohammad Naveed (3/22), Zahoor Khan (3/16), Ghulam Shabber (63 n.o off 46) and Rohan Mustafa (1/15 and 30 n.o off 30), which was a bit too much for Qatar to take as they folded under pressure to lose the one-sided affair pretty convincingly. However, Tamoor Sajjad had a good game for Qatar as he scored 36 runs and picked up the only wicket to fall for UAE in the chase.
Top 5 run-getters in ICC Asia “A” qualifiers:
| Player | Matches | Innings | Runs | Average | Strike-Rate | 100 | 50 |
| Rohan Mustafa (UAE) | 6 | 6 | 165 | 33 | 123.13 | 0 | 1 |
| Muhammad Usman (UAE) | 6 | 5 | 157 | 39.25 | 127.64 | 0 | 1 |
| Ashfaq Ahmed (UAE) | 6 | 6 | 157 | 31.4 | 128.68 | 0 | 0 |
| MNR Cooray (Maldives) | 5 | 5 | 156 | 31.2 | 110.63 | 0 | 1 |
| Faisal Javid Khan (Qatar) | 6 | 6 | 138 | 23 | 164.28 | 0 | 0 |
| Usman Waheed (Qatar) | 6 | 6 | 138 | 23 | 111.29 | 0 | 1 |
Top wicket-takers in ICC Asia “A” qualifiers:
| Player | Matches | Overs | Runs | Wickets | Best Bowling | Average | Economy | Strike-Rate |
| Imran Arif (Saudi Arabia) | 6 | 23 | 134 | 12 | 3/9 | 11.16 | 5.82 | 11.5 |
| Mohammad Naveed (UAE) | 5 | 18 | 113 | 11 | 3/20 | 10.27 | 6.27 | 9.8 |
| Rohan Mustafa (UAE) | 6 | 24 | 99 | 10 | 3/18 | 9.9 | 4.12 | 14.4 |
| Usman Ali (Saudi Arabia) | 6 | 21 | 124 | 9 | 5/23 | 13.77 | 5.9 | 14 |
| Imran Haider (UAE) | 6 | 24 | 126 | 9 | 3/6 | 14 | 5.25 | 16 |
| Mohammad Afzal (Saudi Arabia) | 6 | 24 | 136 | 9 | 3/18 | 15.11 | 5.66 | 16 |
