Does cricket and Asia Cup need expat-heavy UAE, Oman and Hong Kong?

International games featuring teams with club-level cricketing competence aren’t a great advertisement of the sport or the tournament that was anyways struggling for attention in the absence of mega stars like Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma or troll-targets like Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan.

In a classic scheduling faux-pas, Asian Cricket Council, the organisers, kicked off the tournament with four games where Test teams took on weaker teams — UAE, Hong Kong and Oman. If the suits expected an early upset to ignite the event to life, they were either unaware of the gulf that exists among Asia’s Big 5 and the rest, or were dreaming.

They also forgot that they were catering to a low-attention span audience that is used to watching high-octane IPL action for two long months every year. The Asia Cup historically has had its charm and continental supremacy has been always aspirational in this highly-competitive neighbourhood of many rivalries. But by including too many lightweight teams and diluting the tournament, ACC has managed to turn even a thrill-a-minute format, featuring many of the world’s best T20 players, into a drab affair.

India recorded their biggest men’s T20I win over UAE in their Asia Cup 2025 opener earlier this week. (AP)

Fans aren’t sadists, they don’t follow a sport to see the strong pound the weak. Afghanistan toying with Hong Kong to win by 94 runs, India ridiculing hosts UAE in a game that lasted just 17 overs or Pakistan beating Oman by 93 runs were not riveting viewing. If the scoreboard readings of these ‘mis-matches’ were humiliating, the frames were embarrassing.

Not body-shaming here but Hong Kong China had too many players with XXL shirt sizes and it isn’t a great sight when a bowler stops the ball on follow-through by falling on it with all his weight. So used to watching modern-day cricketers glide over the turf like gazelles, this clumsy piece of action was excruciating, a trigger-warning to switch channels.

Weekend corporate cricketers

UAE batsmen looked like weekend corporate cricketers. All they could do when facing Kuldeep Yadav and Varun Chakravarthy was to plonk their front foot, with the bat peeping from behind the pads. They were clueless about where the ball would bounce or how it would turn.

In this short exhibition of batting mediocrity, a moment stood out. It was straight out of an every-day ‘gully cricket’ game. In the 13th over of the UAE innings, batsman Junaid Siddique, stepped out of the crease to smash a Shivam Dube delivery. He missed and the ball reached wicket-keeper Sanju Samson, who on spotting the batsman stationed out of the crease, broke the stumps. The umpire gave Siddique out but Indian skipper Surya allowed the batsman to continue. It was an act of magnanimity that elder Bhaiyas show to ‘chotus’ in street cricket. Was this a festival game or serious cricket?

Asia Cups, of late, have been an excuse to conduct as many India-Pakistan games as possible. The format is designed to maximize the games that get millions. So conveniently, like always, there are no draws of lots and India and Pakistan are bunched in the same group. To guarantee that the arch-rivals stay alive to meet again in the tournament, two no-hoper teams are clubbed with them. UAE and Oman — were the chosen dummy teams this time. The other group too needs four teams, so along with Afghanistan, Lanka and Bangladesh a fourth team, a third minnow, was strung in. Hong Kong was to be that team.

So now, as expected, India and Pakistan will move to Super 4. This sets the stage for another round robin league and the tournament’s second Great Game. And in case India and Pakistan finish Top 2, it will be Blue vs Green again in the final.

But the many one-sided games aren’t the ideal lead-up for the tournament’s main draw — the India vs Pakistan games whose Round One is on Sunday. If the trailer is way too long, the seats go empty and the yawning masses head towards the exit.

So is it fair to keep UAE, Oman and Hong Kong away from the big stage? What about spreading the game? That’s where the game’s governing body, the ICC, has spectacularly failed. Getting teams with expats at big events hasn’t worked. But for Afghanistan, where the locals are deeply invested in the sport, no new team has broken into the elite club.

A sound thrashing can’t turn amateurs in the pros. Doling out spots to half-cooked teams at Asia Cup isn’t how cricket will spread — at best it’s just giving an opportunity for expats to rub shoulders with the game’s icons. The day UAE unearths a true home-grown Rashid Khan or when Hong Kong China has in its team Bo, Chen and Wangs and not Khan, Shukla and Shah, cricket would have spread its wings and cricket can dream of being competitive.