India won the last Asian Games cricket gold without finishing the final, and the men’s tournament restarts on Thursday without them

The men’s cricket tournament at the Asian Games starts on Thursday, and neither India nor Pakistan nor Sri Lanka nor Bangladesh will be anywhere near it. All four are seeded directly into the quarter-finals on 28 and 29 September. Everyone else has to earn a place there first.

Six teams, two groups, four spots

Ten teams are in the competition and only six of them play the group stage. Group A is Afghanistan, Japan and Nepal. Group B is Hong Kong, Malaysia and Oman. Each group is a single round robin across three days, 24 to 26 September, and the top two from each go through.

Japan open against Afghanistan on Thursday at 5.30am IST, with Hong Kong against Malaysia at 10.30am. Afghanistan play Nepal on Friday, Hong Kong play Oman the same day, and the group stage closes on Saturday with Japan against Nepal and Malaysia against Oman.

Afghanistan are the obvious name in that list. They have finished second in all three Asian Games men’s cricket tournaments held so far, in 2010, 2014 and 2023, and the thing keeping them out of the quarter-final byes is the ICC men’s T20I ranking, which is also the thing that handed those byes to India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

India’s gold in 2023 came out of that same table

This is worth remembering before anyone treats the seeding as a formality. India played their first Asian Games cricket tournament in Hangzhou in 2023 and won gold without finishing the final. Rain stopped the match against Afghanistan at 112 for 5 after 18.2 overs and it was never completed. India took the medal on the strength of their T20I ranking. Afghanistan went home with a third consecutive silver.

So the ranking table has already handed India one gold medal, and this time it has excused them the two group matches everyone outside the top four seeds has to play. Afghanistan have been on the other side of that table in all three editions.

India start on Monday, with Bumrah and a 15-year-old

India’s quarter-final is on Monday, 28 September at 10.30am IST, against whoever finishes second in Group A. Shreyas Iyer captains a squad of 14 with Tilak Varma as his deputy, and the names in it range from Jasprit Bumrah to Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, who is 15. Axar Patel, Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan, Abhishek Sharma, Washington Sundar, Arshdeep Singh, Shivam Dube, Yash Thakur, Ravi Bishnoi and Vipraj Nigam make up the rest.

The semi-finals are on Thursday, 1 October. Both medal matches are on Saturday, 3 October.

A ground that did not exist as a cricket venue until recently

All 14 matches are at the Nisshin Cricket Ground inside Kōrogi Sports Park, on the edge of Nagoya. The ground is new, developed for these Games. The square is a hybrid surface, and organisers have compared how it plays to pitches in Pakistan, with both bounce and turn available. Temporary stands hold about 2,000 people.

That is a small venue for a tournament with this much cricket in it, and it is the same ground where India’s women won gold on Tuesday. The men get their turn from Monday, and if the last edition is any guide, the weather has a vote.

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