LAHORE: Pakistan will host the West Asia Baseball Cup later this year, the sport’s continental governing body announced after its executive committee meeting in Taiwan on Thursday.

The Asian Baseball Federation (ABF) decided the Asian U-18 and U-12 Championships will be staged in Taiwan and Japan respectively.

Pakistan Baseball Federation president Fakhar Ali Shah, who attended the meeting, said the country would send its teams in the junior tournaments, which will be held in September (U-18) and November (U-12).

Fakhar said the West Asia Cup will be held in October tentatively and would feature national teams of India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine and Bangladesh.

It will be the second time Pakistan will host the event, the country last staged it in 2023, and won it after defeating Palestine in the final.

Fakhar said that the U-18 and the U-12 Asian championships were also the qualifying rounds for the World Cup as the top three teams of those tournaments would qualify for the mega events.

The president revealed he had also informed ABF president Geoffrey Junior about Pakistan’s plan of hosting the Pakistan Baseball League next year in which Indian, Nepali, Sri Lankan, Iranian and Palestinian players had already expressed their interest.

Published in Dawn, May 17th, 2024