The Asian Games Men's Cricket Tournament Starts Tomorrow

The men's cricket tournament at the Asian Games begins tomorrow at Korogi Athletic Park in Aichi, Japan, with ten teams and a T20 format. It runs to the bronze and gold medal matches on 3 October.

India defend

India won gold at Hangzhou in 2023 and return as defending champions. Their squad was named alongside the one for the Afghanistan T20I series, and Yash Thakur was added to both after Harshit Rana was ruled out with a thigh injury sustained in rehabilitation.

The women's tournament, at the same venue, finished with its medal matches on 22 September.

Ten teams and a compressed schedule

Match days are double headers, with the morning game at 9am local time and the afternoon game at 2pm. A ten team men's draw inside ten days means very little recovery between matches, which affects fast bowlers more than anyone and tends to reward squads with depth over squads with stars.

Why the associate sides matter here

The Asian Games is one of the few tournaments where teams like Japan, China, Thailand and Hong Kong play a full member side in a competitive fixture with something at stake. Those matches are usually one sided, and they are still the most valuable cricket those teams play all year, because nothing in domestic associate cricket simulates facing an international attack.

Japan in particular is playing at home, in a country where the sport is small and the facility is new, and the tournament is a considerably bigger event for them than the medal table will suggest.

The wider point

Cricket is on the programme for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. Every multi sport tournament between now and then is a test of how the sport handles conditions it does not control: a schedule built around eighteen other sports, venues shared with them, and squads assembled around a calendar that was designed without any of it in mind.