The Asian section of the 2019 Cricket World Cup qualification will act as qualifiers for the 2019 Cricket World Cup, set to be hosted by England & Wales. A total of 24 nations will participate in the process, among them 5 'Full Members' of the ICC - the most for any continental zone. The tournament will be hosted by Malaysia, who are set to host their biggest ever cricket tournament since the 1998 Commonwealth Games which featured 16 teams. They will also aim to prove their credentials as a possible venue for Pakistan's 'home' internationals, due to scheduling conflicts with various upcoming T20 leagues forcing them to move their matches out of their adopted home venue in the United Arab Emirates, where they have been playing almost all their home matches since 2009.
The format for the Asian qualifiers includes the single elimination or knockout format, followed by a round-robin group stage format. The first round of the competition is set to be played in the knockout format featuring 16 teams vying for 8 available spots in the group stages. The other 8 teams - namely Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates get a direct bye to the group stages.
The 4 group winners or table toppers from the group stages qualify directly for the 2019 Cricket World Cup. A set of playoffs between the second ranked teams of their respective groups will be contested using the knockout format to determine the other 3 available berths. For the sake of novelty, a tournament final between the two top ranked teams in the group stages will be played to determine the strongest nation in what is arguably cricket's most powerful region.
Sign-ups are open for the following teams:
Sign-ups will be on a first-come-first-serve basis. To sign-up, simply post the name of an available team before anyone else does and that team shall be yours. It's that simple. Managers are permitted to sign up for as many as 2 teams (in very special cases 3 if the number of sign-ups are below what is deemed satisfactory), however no manager is allowed to sign up for more than one Test/ODI nation (Hong Kong, having just lost their ODI status earlier this year still counts as an ODI nation). Also, signing up as a co-manager of a team that has already been claimed will not be tolerated when there are as many as 24 teams available. Your signup will be rejected if you do so.