The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) was adjourned in Dhaka on Thursday (July 24) without the election of the vice-president and formal decision on the Asia Cup 2025, Cricket Age exclusively learns.
With India being the host, it is left to the BCCI to take a call on the tournament.
“The decision regarding the Asia Cup will come soon. The venue and schedule will be announced too,” Mosin Naqvi, the PCB and ACC head, said after the meeting.
An election for the vice-president of the ACC was scheduled, in which Mumbashir Usmani of UAE (Emirates Cricket Board) and Mahinda Vallipuram of Malaysia were in the fray. However as Cricket Age published earlier in the day, it has been deferred.
“A certain person of Emirates Cricket Board is trying to manipulate the ACC vice president election with the support of Pakistan and few other small cricket boards. Thus, to stop this manipulation, the election has been put on hold” an ACC source had told Cricket Age.
Earlier, Cricket Age had published that with this new development, BCCI is most likely to skip UAE for hosting the Asia Cup. In this scenario, Sri Lanka and South Africa, two of India’s closest allies, will be preferred to host the tournament.
BCCI Vice-President Rajeev Shukla and Asian Cricket Council President and Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chairman Mohsin Naqvi are scheduled to meet in the coming days to finalise the venues and the tournament schedule.
A tentative window from September 7 to the third or fourth week of the month has been proposed for the tournament, which will act as a preparatory event for the T20 World Cup, set to be held in February next year.
Shukla and Naqvi will also engage with sponsors at the earliest opportunity, aiming to allow sufficient time for commercial planning.
Even if India and Pakistan are not clubbed in the same group, the two teams will have to battle it out in the Super 4s stage and eventually the final if they make it to the summit clash. In the aftermath of the terror attack in Pahalgam and then the retaliatory Operation Sindoor, calls to boycott cricketing ties with Pakistan in every capacity have gained steam.
