Weekly CRICKET Review - CV | ASIA Cup 2025 is on the way

damithudaya (79)modAtlas Ambassador - LKin Steem Sri Lanka • 7 months ago

Hello, fellow Cricket Enthusiasts,

You already know that I am sharing a weekly wrap-up of what's happening within the Cricket community. And it's the 105th edition now.

As I discussed in the last few weeks, the world of Cricket is quite busy right now, especially with the ICC World Test Championship 2025-2027 cycle, numerous shorter format tournaments, and the leagues. So, let's see what's going on!

Leonardo AI

South Africa tour of Australia, 2025

It's a high-volume tournament between two top-ranking teams. After a clinical win against the West Indies, Australia is facing SA for 3 ODIs and 3 T20s. As I said last week, the T20I series was won by the Australians, but the Proteas did come back well in the ODI series.
SA won the first match by 98 runs. The second one was held at the Great Barrier Reef Arena, Mackay. South Africa started the batting, but they lost the openers quickly. The next three, Tony de Zorzi, Breetzke, and Stubbs, carried the inning well, with the latter two scoring fifties. So, with that effort, they could put in a total of 277/10.

During the chase, we saw another batting failure from the Aussies. Head and Marnus went early, and they couldn't recover well from that. Only Inglish played a sensible knock of 87 runs. There was no one around to help him. Aussies were all out for 193 runs in the 38th over. Ngidi was the star, taking a fifer.

So with that win, SA won the ODI series, and now they have won the last 5 bilateral ODI series against Australia.

Anyway, Australia showed something in the last match. It was a destruction by the hosts. They started the batting, and the top four did an amazing job.

Travis Head – 142 (103b, 17x4, 5x6)
Mitchell Marsh – 100 (106b, 6x4, 5x6)
Cameron Green – 118* (55b, 6x4, 8x6)
Alex Carey – 50* (37b, 7x4, 0x6)

They just toyed with all the ballers. The two openers had a 250-run partnership for the first wicket in 34 overs, and the latter did the most damage by scoring 160+ runs in the last 14 overs together. It was just a carnage, and Aussies scored 431/2 in their 50 overs. It was their second-highest total.

Things became worse for the SA with their chase. With the scoreboard pressure and required run rate, they couldn't do much. Wickets fell regularly without notable innings, and they were all out for 155 runs in 24.5 overs. Australia won by 276 runs. It was their biggest defeat by runs.

So, the series ended with Australia winning the T20I series 2-1, and SA winning the ODI as the same.

2025 Asia Cup

So, another exciting tournament is on the way. This is the 17th edition of the Asia Cup cricket tournament, and it will be a T20I contest. India is the current champion, and they are the most successful team with 8 titles. Sri Lanka has won 6 times, and Pakistan has won the other two.

The matches will be held in the United Arab Emirates from 9 to 28 September 2025.
This time, there will be 8 teams competing for the glory: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Hong Kong
The 8 teams will first be divided into four groups, and they will compete with all in their group. Then the top two teams will be advanced to the Super Four stage and play against one another. The top two in the end will be the finalists. So, altogether there will be 19 matches.

The Squads

Asia Cup Squads

Country	Players
Afghanistan	Rashid Khan (c), Fareed Ahmad, Noor Ahmad, Sediqullah Atal, Sharafuddin Ashraf, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Allah Mohammad Ghazanfar, Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Naveen-ul-Haq, Mohammad Ishaq, Karim Janat, Gulbadin Naib, Mohammad Nabi, Azmatullah Omarzai, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Darwish Rasooli, Ibrahim Zadran
Bangladesh	Litton Das (c, wk), Nasum Ahmed, Taskin Ahmed, Jaker Ali (wk), Parvez Hossain Emon, Nurul Hasan (wk), Tanzid Hasan, Tanzim Hasan, Saif Hassan, Rishad Hossain, Shamim Hossain, Towhid Hridoy, Shoriful Islam, Mehidy Hasan Miraz, Mustafizur Rahman, Mohammad Saifuddin
Hong Kong	Yasim Murtaza (c), Babar Hayat (vc), Zeeshan Ali (wk), Haroon Arshad, Kalhan Challu, Martin Coetzee, Mohammad Ghazanfar, Ali Hassan, Ateeq Iqbal, Aizaz Khan, Anas Khan, Ehsan Khan, Nizakat Khan, Adil Mehmood, Nasrulla Rana, Anshuman Rath, Kinchit Shah, Ayush Shukla, Mohammad Waheed, Shahid Wasif (wk)
India	Suryakumar Yadav (c), Shubman Gill (vc), Jasprit Bumrah, Varun Chakravarthy, Shivam Dube, Hardik Pandya, Axar Patel, Harshit Rana, Sanju Samson (wk), Abhishek Sharma, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Arshdeep Singh, Rinku Singh, Tilak Varma, Kuldeep Yadav
Oman	Jatinder Singh (c), Shakeel Ahmed, Aryan Bisht, Muhammed Imran, Zikria Islam, Aamir Kaleem, Nadeem Khan, Sufyan Mehmood, Hammad Mirza, Mohammad Nadeem, Ashish Odedara, Faisal Shah, Hassnain Shah, Samay Shrivastava, Vinayak Shukla (wk), Karan Sonavale, Sufyan Yousuf (wk)
Pakistan	Salman Ali Agha (c), Shaheen Afridi, Abrar Ahmed, Hasan Ali, Faheem Ashraf, Saim Ayub, Sahibzada Farhan, Mohammad Haris (wk), Salman Mirza, Sufiyan Muqeem, Hassan Nawaz, Mohammad Nawaz, Haris Rauf, Khushdil Shah, Hussain Talat, Mohammad Wasim Jr., Fakhar Zaman
Sri Lanka	to be announced
United Arab Emirates	to be announced