India, Pakistan Advance Straight to Asian Games Cricket Quarter-Finals
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have been handed direct entry to the cricket quarter-finals at the 2026 Asian Games after receiving the top four seeds in the men’s competition.
Cricket is coming back to the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan. From the quarter-finals on, the tournament will use a straight knockout format.
This draw gives the highest-ranked teams in the region a shorter path to their medals, letting them skip the opening round, according to Cricinfo.
It puts India and Pakistan on opposite sides of the bracket, so the two rivals can only meet in the final if they both win their matches. The other teams will play for the remaining four quarter-final spots before the knockout stage.
Lower-ranked teams face a tougher path
The opening round will feature Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates. The four winners will advance to face one of the seeded nations in the last eight.
The latest international rankings decided the seeding, since the Asian Games cricket competition uses the T20 format under which each team gets a single innings limited to a maximum of 20 overs. Both the men’s and women’s events will be played as T20 matches, a format that first appeared at the Asian Games in 2010 and returned in 2022 in Hangzhou.
Cricket remains one of the most anticipated events on the programme, particularly after its inclusion in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, with the Asian Games offering another major international stage for the shortest format.
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