After four long years, the Asia Cup is all set to make a return this year as the 15th edition will be played from August 27 to September 11 this year in Sri Lanka. However, Sri Lanka is going through major economic crisis and political turmoil, owing to which questions were raised whether Sri Lanka can host Asia Cup or not.
While exclusively talking to Sports Tak, the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) chief Jay Shah cleared the air on the hot topic.
"I had a detailed discussion with the leadership team of Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) on the situation in Sri Lanka and its impact on cricket. Sri Lanka Cricket is hopeful of hosting Asia Cup. I will be hosting SLC office bearers in the IPL final on May 29 and will further assess the situation," Shah told Sports Tak.
Couple of days back, SLC Board's secretary Mohan De Silva also ensured that Sri Lanka is all prepared to host the highly anticipated Asia Cup.
While speaking to Sports Tak, De Silva had said ,"there is absolutely nothing wrong in Sri Lanka, there are groups protesting against the regime and we are having a crisis due to bad management. Apart from that there is no civil unrest or political unrest I'm very confident that it will be sorted out in the next couple of weeks."
"I don’t think.. Demonstration going on, before the Asia cup Australians are coming here in June July, so they shown interest and we had discussions with them during the icc meeting , they are very confident in visiting Sri Lanka. similarly, I don’t think there will be any issue in hosting the Asia cup. Actually, I can’t sort off commit and say that Asia cup is on that of course Asian cricket council has to take call on it but at the same time we are very confident and we know that things will sort out and will be normal very soon and we will be able to host all these important events," De Silva had added.
Sri Lanka is marred by its worst financial crisis in more than 70 years. In face of this adversity, people in Island nation are experiencing severe shortages of food, fuel and other essentials. The 22 million people of the island nation have witnessed weeks of power blackouts and severe shortages of food in the wake of the economic and political tension.
Earlier, former champions Sri Lanka were declared the hosts of the Asia Cup T20 tournament. All of Asia's Test teams - India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and hosts Sri Lanka are set to play the 2022 edition of the white-ball tournament that will be played in T20 format this year.
India won the last edition of the Asia Cup under Rohit Sharma's captaincy in 2018 after defeating Bangladesh in the final.
It has been four years since the last Asia Cup, as the competition keeps on getting delayed for one reason or another. It was originally scheduled to be held in September 2020, but was postponed June 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The tournament was then postponed once again to August 2022, with the host nation being changed from Pakistan to Sri Lanka.
