The Asian Games Women's Cricket Tournament Begins Today
Eight teams, a straight knockout from the quarter finals, and medal matches on 22 September. Bangladesh against China opens it.
The women's cricket tournament at the Asian Games begins today at Korogi Athletic Park in Aichi, with Bangladesh against China in the morning and Pakistan against Thailand in the afternoon.
The format
Eight teams, T20, and a direct knockout from the quarter finals. The tournament runs to the medal matches on 22 September, which makes it one of the shortest senior international tournaments of the year: a team can win gold in four matches, or go home after one.
Double headers throughout, with the first game at 9am local time and the second at 2pm.
India defend the title
India won gold at Hangzhou in 2023 and arrive as defending champions, having just played the Women's Asia Cup final in Dubai on 13 September. That is a demanding fortnight, and the squads for the two events were not identical, which matters more in a knockout than it would in a league.
What a short tournament rewards
In a straight knockout, the side that handles the first twenty minutes of a match best usually goes through. There is no room to lose the toss, bat badly and recover over a group stage. For the associate and emerging sides in the draw, that is the opening: they do not need to be the better team over a season, only over three hours on one morning in Japan.
China, Thailand, Hong Kong and Japan have all improved sharply in the women's game over the past five years, largely because T20 is cheap to organise and the gap between a well drilled associate side and a full member side is narrower in twenty overs than in fifty.
The men follow
The men's tournament at the same venue begins on 24 September with ten teams, and runs to the medal matches on 3 October.