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The 2010 Asia Cup is the tenth edition of the Asia Cup Cricket tournament which was started on 15 June 2010 till 24 June 2010 in Sri Lanka. The track at Dambulla Cricket Stadium is one of the few in the world which assist the bowling and will be ones to watch out for the batsmen. In the past nine Asia Cup tournaments, that have been played so far, the India and Sri Lanka has won each four times, whereas Pakistan has been once. The four teams in this edition's tournament are India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. In the last edition, UAE and Hong Kong had also participated in the tournament, but the time meant that only four teams will play each other once before the top two make it through to the final.
The Asia Cup trophy is made up of a combination of silver, gold, copper and brass with a silver finish with mat and gloss finish. It stands to communicate the strength, purity, humility and persistence that not only represent the four metals but also the four participating nations. Each team will play once in the group stages. The top 2 teams based on points at the end of the group stages will meet each other in a one-off final. Each win will yield 4 points while a tie/no result will yield 1 point. The 2010 Asia Cup trophy was unveiled by Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Shahid Afridi, Kumar Sangakkara and Shakib Al Hasan in the presence of Vikas Jain, Business Director, Micromax and Ashraful Huq, CEO - Asian CricketCouncil.
This time Pakistan was happy with the return of Shoaib Malik and Shoaib Akhtar. But Pakistan's problem was their batting in this tournament, which looks a little fragile. Their bowling was strong enough but missing Umar Gul, so this time they lost the chance to get into the finals. India's Sachin Tendulkar and Yuvraj Singh missed in this tournament. Saurabh Tiwary played first time in this international cricket and that was an exciting incident for the Indians. But India too played well and entered the finals. From the beginning, Sri Lanka had a biggest chance to enter the Asia Cup cricket finals as they played very well from the starting. The way Bangladesh lost the matches showed that it was difficult for them to enter into the finals. Sri Lanka and India entered the Tenth Asia Cup Cricket finals and this will be the 18th clash since the start of 2009.
Both Sri Lanka and India already guaranteed themselves in the final of the Asia Cup on June 24. Strangely enough neither of these teams has met in the Asia Cup thus far instead they have both booked their final spots. India made light work of the Tigers in their opening game romping to a six wicket victory on the back of a superior bowling effort restricting their opponents to just 167. Sri Lanka were similarly ruthless against their pool opponents they managed to stave off a Shahid Afridi led batting resurgence then put on their own masterclass with the willow against Bangladesh posting 312. Let's watch the finals tomorrow and hope for the best.
