India To Play In Hong Kong Sixes After 12 Years: India will be sending a team to the popular ‘Hong Kong Sixes 2024’ tournament, which will be the nation’s first participation in the competition in 12 years.
Hong Kong Sixes is a historic tournament. First started in 1992, it was quite popular in the 2000s as it provided something very different to the then slow-paced international cricket. The likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara, Wasim Akram, and MS Dhoni have participated in the competition.
India To Play In Hong Kong Sixes After 12 Years
An official ICC-sanctioned tournament, it is very different from any other high-level cricket competition in the world. It is a five-over match with each team consisting of six players. Every player from a team, excluding the wicketkeeper, bowls one over. While batting, a batter retires after scoring 31 runs but can come back onto the pitch if the rest of their team gets out or retires.
This format sees teams score big runs and favours all-rounders, as each player has to bat and bowl. In this five-over six-a-side game, scores of 100+ runs are quite common.
The competition was last played in 2017, and South Africa are the defending champions. As the name suggests, every edition of this tournament is played in Hong Kong. In the Kowloon Cricket Club, to be more precise. The 2017 edition saw eight teams participate. These teams were Hong Kong, the MCC, Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, Bangladesh, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka.
Hong Kong Sixes 2024 will feature 12 teams, which will be divided into two pools of six teams each. The three-day competition will be played between November 1 and 3.
India will be participating in the Hong Kong Sixes 2024, which will be the team’s first time playing in it since 2012. While the 12-year gap may seem like a long one, the annual competition was put on hiatus in 2012. Since then, it has only been played once, in 2017. So India only missed one edition.
The tournament’s official page on X (formerly Twitter) posted an update, announcing India’s participation. This is a big deal, not only because India is the most popular national team in world cricket but also because they are the reigning T20 World champion, the international format that most closely resembles the Sixes in terms of attacking batting.
However, it is unlikely that any big names from India will feature in the competition. The 2012 tournament saw India send a team filled with lesser-known names like Shafiq Khan, Amit Uniyal, and Neeraj Chauhan.
In the 16 editions of the Kong Kong Sixes tournament, India has found ultimate success in only one, the 2005 edition. India has also finished as runner-up once, in 1996.
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