Kolkata : India will meet hosts Bangladesh in the T20 Asia Cup 2016 opener . The schedule and venue for the tournament was announced on Thursday . All the matches will be played at the Sher e Bangla stadium in Mirpur from February 24 to March 6 .
The first match will be between India and Bangladesh on 24th February while the Men in Blue will take on arch rivals Pakistan on 27th February. Every team will play 1 match against every other team. That’s 4 games for every team and the top 2 will qualify for the final on March 6.
Four teams, Afghanistan, UAE, Oman and Hong Kong will be playing in the qualifying round but only one of them will advance to the main round of the Asia Cup . If there are two teams with the same points at the end of the qualifying round, then Net Run Rate (NRR) will be taken into account. Here is the schedule of Twenty20 Asia Cup 2016 :
February 24: India vs Bangladesh
February 25: Sri Lanka vs To Be Decided
February 26: Bangladesh vs To Be Decided
February 27: India vs Pakistan
February 28: Bangladesh vs Sri Lanka
February 29: Pakistan vs To Be Decided
March 1: India vs Sri Lanka
March 2: Bangladesh vs Pakistan
March 3: India vs To Be Decided
March 4: Pakistan vs Sri Lanka
March 6: Asia Cup Final
For the first time the Asia Cup tournament, a 50-over competition will be played in Twenty20 format. Sri Lanka is the defending champions as they had won the Asia Cup tournament last in 2014.