Asia Cup 2022: Three High-Voltage Matches To Look Forward To In The 13th Edition

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Dubai, August 11: Asia Cup 2022 is right upon us, starting on August 27 in the UAE, and some familiar rivals are ready to entertain us all over again.

This time there will be a flair quotient too as the Asia Cup 2022 will be played in T20 format, tailoring in the fact that this is the ICC T20 World Cup year.

This edition of the Asia Cup offers a lot of importance for the teams as well because they can take a deeper look at the team composition for the big event.

But before that, here are 3 high-voltage matches that can steal the show in the Asia Cup 2022.

1 India vs Pakistan

Undoubtedly, the India vs Pakistan match on August 28 is the marquee clash of the Asia Cup 2022. These two traditional rivals have given us some magic moments in the past across the formats. Whenever they came face to face in the desert, there were thrillers as Javed Miandad’s last ball six off Chetan Sharma that created a siege of sort for years to come. Even now, the head to head record between two teams in the UAE is overwhelmingly in favour of Pakistan as they have a 19-9 edge over India in 29 matches.

Now, a set of new generation players are the flag-bearers of both the teams but the needle has not gone down even one bit. We can still look forward to some fire from Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli, Babar Azam, Shaheen Afridi etc.

2 India vs Bangladesh

For this to happen, India need to finish first or second in the Group A and correspondingly, Bangladesh also should finish first or second in Group B. It is not a possibility to be ruled out. The only hindrance is the wretched recent form of Bangladesh as they had lost to both West Indies and Zimbabwe at home.

Coming to back to the match, India vs Bangladesh is not quite the India vs Pakistan. But the fans have waged social media battle, remember the memes with Dhoni’s chopped off head, over the contest. On the field too, the rivalry has bloomed in the latter of 2000s as testified by MS Dhoni’s last ball run out of Mustafizur Rahman in the 2016 T20 World Cup. So, can we see another round of explosive stuff?

H2H in T20: M: 11, India Won: 10, Bangladesh Won: 1

3 Pakistan vs Afghanistan

This is not a fabled rivalry or even a contest that has seen many chapters. But the Pakistan vs Afghanistan match holds the promise of being a hotly contested one, a match-up for the future. First things first, for this to happen both Pakistan and Afghanistan need to qualify from Group A and Group B respectively as A1 / A2 and B1 / B2.

If it happens, this match can throw up some brilliant moments as both the teams have some wonderful T20 players. Pakistan have the likes of captain Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan, Shaheen Afridi, Fakhar Zaman etc while Afghanistan boast of players like Rashid Khan, the exciting Rahmanullah Gurbaz etc in their ranks. It would not be entirely a shocker if the Afghans pull off a massive upset in this match.

T20 H2H: Pakistan won 2; Afghanistan won: 0