Defending champion Afghanistan, host Nepal, the UAE and Malaysia are taken as the semifinal-favorites in the ACC Twenty20 Cup, which kicks off Saturday at the TU Cricket Ground, Kirtipur. However, writing-off Hong Kong and Oman would be injustice too.
Saudi Arabia is the lowest profile team among the 10 participants as they arrived in Kathmandu without their chief coach and a coach. Asian Cricket Council (ACC) Development Officer Ikbal Sikander took the charge of Saudi Arabia for this tournament recently and said that none of the team could be taken lightly in the T-20 format of the cricket.
“Any team taken as underdog has to lose nothing and it has no pressure. Pressure always comes to favorites,” said Sikander, who was a member of the World Cup winning Pakistan team. “Prediction often fails in T20 format. One over could be enough to change the course of the game anytime,” he added.
As Afghanistan has already qualified to the ICC World T20, with a One-Day status, semifinalists of the ACC T20 will have maximum chance of qualification to the ICC event.
UAE is also a tough contender, having defeated Afghanistan in Inter Continental Four-Day Tournament two months ago and pulled off victory against the same opponent in two ODIs. The UAE is slated in the group B of the tournament alongside Nepal.
However, the UAE coach Kabir Khan targets entering semifinal and securing qualification only. “I consider this tournament tougher than ICC World T20 Qualifiers. Playing in Nepal is always difficult. The slow wickets here help spinners more and it will be a challenge for our team, which had played on good wickets earlier,” said Khan, who was Afghanistan coach once. “Thus, we are targeting semifinal and qualification only, for now,” he added.
“You don’t get time to correct mistakes in T20. One mistake, you are gone. If you play 4-5 good shots, you can change the course of the game,” said Khan.
He said that UAE has picked players who can adapt to Nepali environment and T20 style, instead of selecting them on the basis of their past performance. “We have brought cricketers, who know T20 format well, selecting them from around 200 clubs,” claimed Khan.
If Khan is to be believed, Nepal – despite not-so-good performance in T20 format – is a tough opponent. “Nepalis a very good team within ACC and they will have home environment and crowd advantage this time,” said Khan.
Nepal, who could not cross group stage in the first two editions of the tournament, is expecting semifinal berth and qualification to the ICC World T20 Qualifiers.
Nepal coach Pubudu Dassanayake said that his team has found the rhythm in every department of the game. “We are waiting for the first match against Hong Kong,” said Dassanayake, who knows less about Hong Kong.
Hong Kong, who recently played practice matches against Sri Lanka U-23 and Board XI, is set to give tough fight to the host team on Saturday.
As Dassanayake is still not sure about the pitch behavior, he is yet to decide the XI for the first match. “I’ve already picked 12 players but I’ll decide the playing set in the last moment after the pitch inspection on Saturday morning,” said Dassanayake. “If dew remains on the pitch, we’ll go with three pacers otherwise we’ll add spinner in the team,” he added.
Former coach of Nepal and the current coach of Oman, Roy Dias, said that Oman has handed him responsibility, because of his knowledge about Nepal’s environment. “I was a coach here for almost a decade. Probably,Omansigned me as I understandNepal’s environment well,” said Dias to ICC website.
Dias also has set his target to reach semifinal and to qualify for the ICC World T20 Qualifiers.