Singapore Cricket Association (SCA) have announced their 14-member men’s national squad for the upcoming ACC Men’s T20 Eastern Region tournament, scheduled to be held in Bangkok, Thailand from 29th Feb – 7th Mar, 2020. This will be Singapore’s first International tournament after their appearance in the 2020 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Qualifiers held in Oct/Nov 2019 in UAE.
The top two teams in the 7-nation event will advance to the final qualifier tournament and join the two teams from the Western Region tournament, from which the winning team will advance into the main draw of the 2020 ACC Asia Cup. Other competing teams in the Eastern Region tournament are Bhutan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal and Thailand. China withdrew in February 2020 from the tournament after being originally featured in the schedule, due to Novel Coronavirus outbreak.
Former national head coach of Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, Dav Whatmore, has been appointed as the head coach for Singapore in the Eastern Region T20 event. Whatmore has been in charge with Kerala’s domestic squad in India’s Ranji Trophy for the past two seasons and has already found success with Kerala qualifying for the semi-final stage of Ranji Trophy in the 2018-2019 season. Singapore has had a successful 2019 with victories over Zimbabwe, Scotland and Nepal in the T20I format of the game and have also performed well in the CWC Challenge League Group A tournament held in Malaysia.
Singapore national squad members played a 12-match series against a Peace XI squad from Pakistan at home to prepare for the tournament.
Singapore Squad for ACC Eastern Region T20
Amjad Mahboob (Captain), Rezza Gaznavi, Surendran Chandramohan, Anantha Krishna, Manpreet Singh, Vinoth Baskaran, Abdul Bhadelia, Timothy David, Aritra Dutta, Janak Prakash, Rohan Rangarajan, Aryaman Uchil, Aahan Achar and Sidhanth Singh
