The 2023 ACC Men's Premier Cup was the inaugural edition of the ACC Men's Premier Cup, hosted by the Cricket Association of Nepal from 18 April to 2 May 2023. Ten associate teams competed in 24 matches across two venues in Nepal, of whom eight teams directly qualified for the tournament through ICC T20I rankings and two advanced from the 2023 Challenger Cup. Hosts Nepal defeated the United Arab Emirates in the final, to become the inaugural champions. Nepal qualified for the 2023 Asia Cup, while Nepal, the United Arab Emirates and Oman qualified for the 2023 ACC Emerging Teams Asia Cup.
Background The ACC Men's Premier Cup is a biennial international cricket competition in limited overs cricket format (an alternating format of 50-overs and 20-overs cricket), organised by the Asian Cricket Council (ACC). In January 2023, the tournament was announced as a part of the associate teams' qualification pathway for the Asia Cup and the ACC Emerging Teams Asia Cup.
Format The 10 participating teams were divided into two groups of five teams each. In the group stage, each team played each of the other teams in the group once in a round-robin format for 20 matches, and the top two teams in each group advanced to the knockout stage. The knockout stage consisted of two semi-finals, a third-place play-off and a final. In the 2023 tournament, all the matches were played in 50-over format; of which only the matches involving associate teams with ODI status had international status as One Day International (ODI), while other matches were played without international status.
Teams The top 8 associate teams based on the ICC T20I rankings: Hong Kong, Kuwait, Malaysia, Nepal, Oman, Qatar, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates directly qualified for the Premier Cup, while the next ranked 8 teams played in the Challenger Cup. Top 2 teams in the 2023 Challenger Cup: Saudi Arabia and Bahrain advanced to the Premier Cup.
Venues The tournament was played across 2 venues in Nepal: 11 matches at Mulpani International Cricket Ground in Kageshwari-Manohara (including semi-final 2) and 13 matches at Tribhuvan University International Cricket Ground in Kirtipur (including semi-final 1, 3rd place play-off and final).
Venues in Nepal Kageshwari-Manohara Kirtipur Mulpani International Cricket Ground Tribhuvan University International Cricket Ground Capacity: 4,000 Capacity: 13,000 Matches: 11 (Semi-final 2) Matches: 13 (Semi-final 1,
Squads Following squads were announced for the tournament: Bahrain: Fiaz Ahmed, Sohail Ahmed, Waseeq Ahmed, Imran Anwar, Junaid Aziz, Haider Butt (c), Shahbaz Badar (wk), Rizwan Butt, Ali Dawood, Abdul Majid, David Mathias, Sai Sarthak, Sathaiya Veerapathiran, Muhammad Younis Hong Kong: Zeeshan Ali (wk), Haroon Arshad, Mohammad Ghazanfar, Adit Gorawara (wk), Babar Hayat, Aizaz Khan, Ehsan Khan, Nizakat Khan (c), Yasim Murtaza, Nasrulla Rana, Anshuman Rath, Kinchit Shah, Ayush Shukla, Shahid Wasif Kuwait: Ilyas Ahmed, Mohammad Amin, Clinto Anto, Mohammed Aslam (c), Meet Bhavsar (wk), Adnan Idrees, Shiraz Khan, Parvindar Kumar, Sayed Monib, Usman Patel (wk), Yasin Patel, Shahrukh Quddus, Ravija Sandaruwan, Bilal Tahir Malaysia: Muhammad Amir, Wan Azam, Syed Aziz, Ahmad Faiz (c), Rizwan Haider, Khizar Hayat, Sharvin Muniandy, Anwar Rahman, Nazril Rahman, Fitri Sham, Virandeep Singh (wk), Muhamad Syahadat, Vijay Unni, Muhammad Wafiq Nepal: Dipendra Singh Airee, Kushal Bhurtel, Pratis GC, Gulsan Jha, Sompal Kami, Karan KC, Sandeep Lamichhane, Gyanendra Malla, Kushal Malla, Rohit Paudel (c), Lalit Rajbanshi, Bhim Sharki, Aarif Sheikh, Aasif Sheikh (wk) Oman: Fayyaz Butt, Sandeep Goud, Aqib Ilyas, Kaleemullah, Ayaan Khan, Bilal Khan, Shoaib Khan, Naseem Khushi (wk), Zeeshan Maqsood (c), Mohammad Nadeem, Jay Odedra, Kashyap Prajapati, Adeel Shafique (wk), Jatinder Singh Qatar: Owais Ahmed, Amir Farooq, Zaheer Ibrahim, Ikramullah Khan, Kamran Khan, Imal Liyanage (wk), Gayan Munaweera, Muhammad Murad, Mohammed Nadeem, Mohammed Rizlan (c, wk), Khurram Shahzad, Muhammad Tanveer, Valeed Veetil, Sandun Withanage Saudi Arabia: Ishtiaq Ahmad, Manan Ali, Imran Arif, Atif-Ur-Rehman, Ahmed Baladraf, Haseeb Ghafoor (wk), Saad Khan, Usman Najeeb, Hisham Sheikh (c), Zain Ul Abidin, Waqar Ul Hassan, Abdul Waheed, Abdul Wahid, Zuhair Singapore: Vinoth Baskaran, Abdul Rahman Bhadelia, Adwitya Bhargava, Surendran Chandramohan, Avi Dixit, Aritra Dutta (c), Ramesh Kalimuthu, Amartya Kaul, Vinit Mehta, Aaryan Modi, Thilipan Omaidurai, Prasheen Param, Akshay Puri, Rohan Rangarajan, Manpreet Singh (wk), Sidhant Srikanth United Arab Emirates: Vriitya Aravind (wk), Basil Hameed, Aayan Afzal Khan, Asif Khan, Matiullah Khan, Zahoor Khan, Aryan Lakra, Karthik Meiyappan, Rohan Mustafa, Rameez Shahzad, Sanchit Sharma, Junaid Siddique, Ansh Tandon, Muhammad Waseem (c)
Group stage In the group stage, two groups of five teams played in a round-robin format for a total of 20 matches from 18 to 27 April 2023 across the two venues. The top two teams from each group: Nepal and Oman from group A and the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait from group B advanced to the knockout stage.
Group A Group B
Group A
Group B
Knockout stage The knockout stage consisted of two semi-finals played on 29 April, a 3rd place play-off on 30 April, and a final scheduled for 1 May. The winners of the tournament: Nepal qualified for the 2023 Asia Cup, while the top 3 teams: Nepal, the United Arab Emirates and Oman qualified for the 2023 ACC Emerging Teams Asia Cup.
Bracket
Sources:
Semi-finals
3rd place play-off
Final
See also
References
External links