At the Asian Cricket Council governing board meeting on August 22, Pakistan raised concerns about conditions in Nagoya for next month’s Asian Games cricket competition. India agreed. The two boards are now looking into it jointly, and the ACC has agreed to send a delegation to inspect the venue in the coming days.
The concerns are substantive. The pitch sits on a converted baseball field — the pitching mound is reportedly still in place off to one side — and has never been played on, so nobody knows how it will behave. Dressing room facilities at the ground were also flagged. Beyond the venue, the Games are housing athletes across three sets of accommodation, including a luxury cruise liner. The cricketers are in hotels, two to a room, and those who have seen them say a player opening his kit bag would hit his roommate.
The agreement is the story. These are boards whose players have stopped shaking hands, and whose Asia Cup trophy remains unclaimed. In the vlog below, cricexec founder and publisher Zee Zaidi lays out what was raised, what happens next, and whether this signals anything larger.
Transcript
Zee Zaidi:
What did it take to finally get India and Pakistan to agree on something in cricket? Unbelievable. Friends, I’m Zee, founder and publisher of cricexec, the leading publication on the business of cricket worldwide, and I’m here to tell you exactly what.
As many of you know, India and Pakistan are bitter rivals on the global stage, having fought, depending on how you count it, four or five wars since their independence in 1947 from England. And in the cricket world, that rivalry has been intensifying, especially since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and it took another step up last year in 2025 after the Pahalgam attacks and India and Pakistan’s subsequent, call it a war, mini war. And since then, as we know, the hostilities are at an all-time unprecedented high to the point that the players are not even shaking hands before any international matches. They’re playing each other in international tournaments, but they’re not shaking hands. And that started when India refused to shake hands post-Pahalgam. Now, that was not only the men in last year’s Champions Trophy, but then the women. So no one’s shaking hands at this point, to the point that last year in the men’s Asia Cup, there was an even greater escalation.
Mohsin Naqvi, the president of the PCB, Pakistan Cricket Board, who’s also the interior minister of Pakistan, is president of the Asian Cricket Council, the ACC, which hosts the Asia Cup. So when India won, they were supposed to receive the trophy from him, but declined, and they have yet to receive the trophy. So that’s the state of things right now. So it couldn’t be a harder time to get Pakistan and India to agree on anything.
But here we go. September, the Asian Games happen in Japan, in Nagoya, starting, I believe, September 17th. And there is a cricket competition in the Asian Games, and men and women will be competing in the T20 format. Of course, India will, Pakistan will compete, and several other teams will compete.
Well, here’s what’s going on that Pakistan and India finally agree on. At the Asian Cricket Council governing board meeting that just happened last August 22 where they had a round of elections, Pakistan raised a concern about the conditions in Nagoya for the upcoming Asian Games, and India actually agreed, and now they’re jointly looking into it. Now, what were those concerns? Several, which are legitimate and serious, actually, and both parties actually agree.
One, the pitch is kind of touch and go. The pitch that they’re using for the cricket competition is a converted baseball field, and apparently the pitching mound from the baseball field is still there, off in the corner, I think, off the field, but that is the state of things. It’s never been used before. No one’s sure how the pitch is gonna behave. On top of that, there are apparently not great dressing room facilities at the ground, which Pakistan raised, India agreed.
Beyond that, there are concerns about accommodations for the athletes, because instead of a typical athletes’ village, this year’s Japan Asia Games has 3 different sets of accommodations for athletes, including a luxury cruise liner, and some get hotels. But the cricketers are staying in hotels, which is the good news, but for those of you who have traveled in Japan, that part of the world, hotel rooms are extremely small. And players are supposed to stay 2 in a room, but there’s no way, according to the players and the people who’ve seen the facilities, that 2 people can fit in each of these hotel rooms. They say when one player stands up and opens his kit bag, it’ll hit the other player.
So the ACC agreed, everyone agreed that they were gonna send a delegation to check this out. So this is gonna happen in the coming days, and we’ll see what comes of it and what happens to the tournament. But for now, the headline here is Pakistan and India agree there is a problem. They’re approaching it in a coordinated way. Who knows if this is a start of something bigger in the cricket world? We have yet to see that, and we at cricexec are gonna keep reporting and keep you posted on this developing story and others. If you like what you hear, just drop a note and a comment below or hit the subscribe button, and we’ll keep you in the loop.
