Asia Cup 2018

This article is about the men's cricket tournament.

The ACC Asia Cup is a men's One Day International & Twenty20 International cricket tournament. It was established in 1983 when the Asian Cricket Council was founded as a measure to promote goodwill between Asian countries. It was originally scheduled to be held every two years.

The first Asia cup was held in 1984 in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates where the council's offices were based (until 1995). India boycotted the 1986 tournament due to strained cricketing relations with Sri Lanka. Pakistan boycotted the 1990–91 tournament due to strained political relations with India. The 1993 tournament was cancelled due to strained political relations between India and Pakistan. The ACC has announced that the tournament will be held biennially from 2008 onwards.[2] The ICC has ruled that all games played in the Asia Cup have official ODI status.

After downsizing the Asian Cricket Council in 2015, it was announced by the ICC that Asia Cup events from 2016 will be played on a rotation basis between One Day International and Twenty20 International format, on the basis of format of upcoming world events.[3] As a result, the 2016 event was the first event played in the T20I format and functioned as a preparatory tournament ahead of the 2016 ICC World Twenty20.

India and Sri Lanka are the most successful teams in the ODI format of the tournament having won the cup five times each. Pakistan has also won the ODI tournament two times. India is the most successful team in the T20I format having won the inaugural(only) version in 2016. India is the best and the most successful team in the tournament having won it 6 times (5 times in ODI format and once in the T20 format).