ASIA CUP 2012.......

Mon, Mar 12 Bangladesh v Pakistan
Tue, Mar 13 India v Sri Lanka
Thu, Mar 15 Pakistan v Sri Lanka
Fri, Mar 16 India v Bangladesh
Sun, Mar 18 India v Pakistan
Tue, Mar 20 Sri Lanka v Bangladesh
Thu, Mar 22 FINAL

After China and the United Arab Emirates had put in a bid to host the Asia Cup 2012, Bangladesh has come out tops with the Asian Cricket Council awarding it the rights to host the event. The decision came after an executive committee meeting of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) in Dhaka on Dec 11. The tournament will unfold at the Shere Bangla National staidum in Mirpur from March 1 to March 12. The last time Bangladesh hosted the Asia Cup was in 2000.

"We are thrilled the 11th Asia Cup will be held in Bangladesh," Syed Ashraful Huq, CEO of the ACC, told ESPNcricinfo. "It goes well with Mustafa Kemal's presidency of both bodies [ACC and the Bangladesh Cricket Board] and we are confident the tournament will go well."

The tournament will involve Asia's four Test-playing nations - India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and possibly some associate countries in the Asia region. "We are endeavouring to have more countries take part in future events [of the Asia Cup]," Shahriar Khan, media manager of the ACC, told ESPNcricinfo. "At this stage Afghanistan are the only real world-class challengers. We would like the other countries to come up and once they are ready, we would expand the Asia Cup in the years ahead."

China was one of the contenders for hosting the tournament but lost out due to conc erns over whether it had the cricketing infrastructure to hold a quadrangular one-day competition. "There are no floodlights, that are required, as all the matches [in the Asia Cup] have to be day and night games," Huq said. The cricket matches of last month's Asian Games were held in the city of Guangzhou in southern China. Guangzhou's stadium has an 80-metre boundary and seven pitches, four of which were used to hold 30 Twenty20 matches during the Asian Games.

India are the current holders of the Asia Cup, having beaten Sri Lanka by 81 runs in the final in Dambulla, Sri Lanka in June this year