Statistical Preview of the Asia Cup 2018

The Asia Cup returns to the 50-overs format after a gap of four years. The tournament will be held in the UAE for the first time since 1995. The UAE hosted the 1984 and 1995 editions of the tournament but all those games were played in Sharjah only. The forthcoming tournament will be first to feature five Test-playing nations as Afghanistan earned a full-member nation status last year. Hong Kong, the winner of the Asia Cup Qualifier is the 6th team. The finalists of the 2017 Champions Trophy, India and Pakistan, will start the tournament as the favourites.

All the key stats and numbers that matter ahead of the 13th edition of the Asia Cup in the ODI format:

1 – MS Dhoni has featured in 13 matches across three different editions of the 50-over format Asia Cup thus far. He appeared in all those games as captain of India. This will be Dhoni’s first as a player.

4 – Hong Kong have featured in four matches in the history of the tournament thus far losing in all of them. Hong Kong and UAE are the only teams to have not won a game in the history of Asia Cup thus far.

They have faced top ten full-member nations in only five ODI matches thus far including four times in the Asia Cup. Hong Kong were defeated by a margin of more than 80 runs in all those five matches.

7 – Sri Lanka have defeated India, Pakistan and Bangladesh on just seven occasions since the 2015 World Cup. The Lankans faced these three teams in 26 ODI matches and ended up losing on 18 occasions.

8 – Pakistan are currently on an eight-ODI winning streak in the UAE. Their last loss defeat here was way back in November 2015 against England.

22 – Bangladesh have won 22 out of the 31 ODI matches they’ve played in Asia since September 2014. Their win-loss ratio of 2.750 in Asia in this period is bettered by only Hong Kong (4.000). However, they’ve not played any cricket in UAE for more than two decades.

40 – Number of ODI matches Team India has won since the end of the 2015 World Cup. Their number of wins in this format are only behind England’s 48 wins. India have played 62 ODIs and lost 21.

Their win-loss ratio of 1.904 in this period is the 2nd best behind England’s 2.400. Interestingly, Hong Kong’s win-loss ratio in ODIs in this period reads 1.500 as the team has won nine of the 15 matches.

89.11 – Babar Azam has a batting average of 89.11 in the ODI matches he played in UAE. He has scored 809 runs in the 11 ODI innings in this country including five consecutive hundreds.

108 – Rashid Khan has bagged as many as 108 wickets in his ODI career thus far in only 47 matches. Since his ODI debut in October 2015, no other bowler has 100 ODI wickets.

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