India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka secured direct entry into the men\u2019s cricket knockout stage at the 2026 Asian Games after the draw was announced on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 10-team men\u2019s competition, starting<\/a> from September 24 in Nagoya, will begin with a preliminary round featuring Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Nepal and Oman competing for the remaining quarter-final berths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Afghanistan, Japan and Nepal were drawn in Group A, while Hong Kong, Malaysia and Oman were placed in Group B. The top two teams from each group will advance to the knockout stage to join the four seeded sides.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The women\u2019s tournament, scheduled from September 17-22, features eight teams and will begin at the quarter-final stage. Defending champions India will face hosts Japan, Bangladesh will take on China, Sri Lanka will meet Malaysia, and Pakistan will play Thailand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All matches in both competitions will be played in the Twenty20 format.<\/p>\n\n\n\n India swept <\/a>the cricket gold medals at the 2022 Asian Games, held in 2023 in Hangzhou, claiming both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s titles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka secured direct entry into the men\u2019s cricket knockout stage at the 2026 Asian Games after the draw was announced..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/paksouch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-25-090706.png",464,471,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/paksouch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-25-090706-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/paksouch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-25-090706-296x300.png",296,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/paksouch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-25-090706.png",464,471,false],"large":["https:\/\/paksouch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-25-090706.png",464,471,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/paksouch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-25-090706.png",464,471,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/paksouch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Screenshot-2026-07-25-090706.png",464,471,false]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"Sports<\/a>","tag_info":"Sports","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7399,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7398\/revisions\/7399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paksouch.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}