Austria triumphant in 5-nation Continental T20I Cup in Romania

Cricket Romania will be hosting the 5-nation Cotinental T20I Cup in Aug 2019 at Moara Vlasiei ground in Ilfov county in Bucharest. Romania will be hosting team’s from Czech Republic, Turkey, Luxembourg & Austria. All matches in the tournament will carry official T20I status and ranking points towards ICC Men’s Global T20I team rankings.

Romania are the defending champions from the 2018 edition of the tournament, when they hosted Russia, Turkey and Bulgaria from Jul 06th – 08th. Romania’s domestic champions, Cluj CC, were recently involved in the inaugural edition of the European Cricket League (ECL) as well, apart from being the runners-up in the 2019 edition of the Transylvania Cricket League (TCL) at Morai Vlasiei ground.

As per the orginial scheduling involving Russia, two groups were made with three team’s each. However, with Russia withdrawing from the tournament, the schedule for the tournament has been changed with a single round-robin group stage format, followed by Final between the top two team’s.

The organisers had earlier planned an IPL style play-off structure upon completion of the group stage, which has been cancelled now and a regulation final will take place.

Squads

Czech Republic: Ed Knowles (Captain), Hilal Ahmad, Shaun Dalton, Sabawoon Davizi, Honey Gori, Arshad Hyat, Naveed Khan, Sameera Maduranga, Kushal Mendon, Chris Pearce, Sumit Pokhriyal, Rakshit Shoumyadeep, Paul Taylor & Sudesh Wickramasekara

Luxembourg: Tony Whiteman (Captain), Atif Kamal, James Barker, Girish Venkatesh, Joost Mees, Suhail Sadiq, Chris Fry, Ankush Nanda, Roshan Vishwanath, Mohit Dixit, Vikram Vijh, Timothy Barker, Richie Neale & Marcus Cope

Romania: Ramesh Satheesan (Captain), Abdul Shakoor, Cosmin Zavoiu, Dharmendra Manani, Gohar Manan, Ijaz Hussain, Imran Haider, Laurentiu Gherasim, Pavel Florin, Peter Danci, Raj Arjun, Rajesh Kumar, Sadeeq Khan, Sivakumar Periyalwar, Satwik Nadigotla & Shantanu Vashisht

Austria: Razmal Shigiwal (Captain), Anthony Larkan, Aaqib Iqbal, Amit Nathwani, Bilal Zalmai, Abrar Bilal, Arsalan Arif, Zeeshan Arif, Mirza Ahsan, Kunal Joshi, Abdul Rahman Miralikhel, Mark Simpson-Parker, Habib Ahmadzai & Abdullah Akbarjan

2019 Continental T20I Cup Schedule

Tournament Update

Austria won the 2019 Continental Cup T20I tournament after registering an emphatic win over Czech Republic in the final. Austria were dominant against both Turkey and Luxembourg during the group stages of the tournament and continued the same momentum in the final, highlighted by a T20I century for Bilal Zalmai.