Pakistan beat Hong Kong in the last Asian Games quarter-final, and they meet in the first one in Nisshin

Pakistan and Hong Kong have met twice in T20Is, and Pakistan have won both comfortably. The second of those games was an Asian Games quarter-final in Hangzhou on 3 October 2023, which Pakistan won by 68 runs. On Monday, 28 September, they play another one: the first quarter-final of the men’s competition at Korogi Sports Park in Nisshin. It starts at 9am local time, which is 5:30am IST.

The Hangzhou game was closer than the margin suggests for about half of it. Hong Kong’s bowlers had Pakistan in trouble through the middle of the innings, with Ayush Shukla taking 4 for 49 and Mohammad Ghazanfar 3 for 26, before Aamer Jamal’s 41 dragged the total to 160. Hong Kong then got to a decent position behind Babar Hayat, who top-scored with 29, and fell apart once he was out. Khushdil Shah took 3 for 13 and they were all out for 92 in 18.5 overs. Shukla, Ghazanfar and Hayat are all in the squad again.

The first meeting was nothing like that. At the 2022 Asia Cup in Sharjah, Pakistan made 193 for 2 and bowled Hong Kong out for 38 in 10.4 overs, a 155-run win, and no Hong Kong batter reached double figures.

A new-look Pakistan side

Almost nothing about this Pakistan team looks like the ones that won those games. Babar Azam, Shaheen Afridi, Shadab Khan and Salman Ali Agha are not in Japan. Sahibzada Farhan is captaining Pakistan in white-ball cricket for the first time, with Abdul Samad as his vice-captain, and four of the 15 had not played a T20I when the squad was picked: Akif Javed, Ali Raza, Maaz Sadaqat and Saad Masood. The left-arm seamer Salman Mirza has since been ruled out with a fractured thumb, and Mohammad Wasim Jr has replaced him.

Farhan is the exception. He was the leading run-scorer at the 2026 T20 World Cup with 383 runs at 76.60, the most by anyone in a single edition, and the first player to hit two hundreds at one T20 World Cup. Saim Ayub and the leg-spinner Abrar Ahmed add two more players with plenty of international cricket behind them.

He does not accept that the squad is green. “It is not like the players who have been selected for the Asian Games are inexperienced,” Farhan said before the team flew out. “They have all played international cricket [or] come into the team after proving themselves in domestic cricket and the PSL.” Pakistan spent a pre-departure camp in Karachi on spin-friendly pitches, and he said he had been working on sweeps and reverse sweeps, shots he does not normally play.

Hong Kong’s route to the last eight

Pakistan went straight into the quarter-finals as one of the four top seeds. Hong Kong had to earn their place and nearly did not. They opened on 24 September with 81 for 9 against Malaysia and lost by eight wickets with eight overs to spare. The next day they made 121 for 8 against Oman and then had them 5 for 3 inside three overs. Shukla took three of the first four wickets and finished with 3 for 23. Oman finished on 80 for 6, and Hong Kong won by 41 runs. Malaysia’s last game against Oman was abandoned without a ball bowled, which left Malaysia top of Group B and Hong Kong second.

Yasim Murtaza captains the side, with Hayat as his deputy. Hayat and Nizakat Khan both played in the Sharjah game four years ago.

Runs have been hard to find in Nisshin

In the six group games, no side got past 129 in a full 20-over innings. The highest total was Nepal’s 149 for 4 against Japan, but that came in a match cut to 15 overs a side before rain washed out the chase.

That is the part of this fixture that gives Hong Kong a chance. Their bowlers troubled Pakistan three years ago, and on pitches where 120 has been enough to win, one good spell could matter more than any gap in reputation. Pakistan have the better players. Several of them have never had to get through a knockout game for their country, though. The winner goes into the semi-finals on 1 October, and India play Afghanistan in the second quarter-final later on Monday.

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