After wonderful Asia Cup experience against Pakistan and India, Nepal has started their preparation to play another Asia Cup later this year. This time it will be Nepal’s U19 Men’s side who will be looking to qualify for U19 Asia Cup when they play 16 teams ACC Men’s U19 Premier Cup next month in Malaysia.
Tournament will be played in league cum knockout format with 16 teams divided into 4 groups of 4 teams each and winner of each group making into the semifinals.
Tournament will have 14 ACC member associates along with two invitees Japan and Indonesia. Indonesia will be playing first ACC tournament while Japan will make its comeback after year 2000 when they played ACC Trophy. They later joined newly formed EAP region of ICC. Nepal U19 team is grouped with slightly weaker U19 sides of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Iran in Group A. Nepal will open the tournament against Iran on 12th of October 2023 while they will face Bahrain on 15th and Saudi Arabia on 19. Semifinal will be played on 22nd October and Final along with 3rd place playoff will be played on 24th October 2023.
Other teams playing in the tournament will be UAE, Oman, Qatar and China in Group B, Singapore, Kuwait, Thailand and Maldives in Group C and Hong Kong, Malaysia, Japan and Indonesia in Group D. Both the finalists and the winner of 3rd place playoff will make it to U19 Asia Cup to played on December along with five full members of Asia namely India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
Not to forget, Nepal qualified for ICC U19 World Cup to played in Sri Lanka next year beating UAE U19 team in nail-biting last match earlier this year. Further, Cricket Association of Nepal have announced 24 men preliminary squad for the tournament and they have started their camp in Kirtipur.
Nepal’s preliminary squad: Aakash Tripathi, Arjun Kumal, Dipak Bohara, Deepak Bohara, Uttam Thapa Magar, Dipak Dumbre, Dipesh Kandel, Hemant Dhami, Durgesh Gupta, Aakash Chand, Dev Khanal, Subhash Bhandari, Bishal KC, Milan Bohara, Prajwal Thapa, Tul Bahadur Thapa, Nirmal Gurung, Rajesh Yadav, Bipin Rawal, Unish Singh Thakuri, Ashok Poudel, Abhinash Tiwari, Naren Bhatta, Niraj Yadav
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