How Many Times Has India Played Cricket at the Asian Games?

Once. That’s the honest answer. Before this year, India’s men had shown up for Asian Games cricket exactly one time, at Hangzhou in 2023, and they left with gold. Everything happening in Japan this month is round two, not round five or six like you’d expect from a team this dominant in white-ball cricket. 

Cricket has only been part of the Asian Games three times since 2010, and India sat out two of those three, so “defending champion” is a title India has worn for all of one tournament so far. Continue reading the blog by Winexchange cricket experts to know what our players bring to the table this year. 

Why India Barely Shows Up to This EventWinexchange 

Here comes the shocker: cricket is not a fixture Asian Games event; it has been included in only three out of the nineteen Asian Games, namely Guangzhou 2010, Incheon 2014, and Hangzhou 2023. The Indian team did not participate in Guangzhou.

Not that the BCCI believed the event was worthless to compete in, but both the schedules clashed with the Indian team’s international schedule. And, sending a makeshift team made no sense either.

The gold was clinched by Bangladesh in 2010, while in 2014, Sri Lanka won it. India’s name is absent from both podiums for the simplest possible reason, nobody from India actually turned up to play.

2023 broke that habit. The dates in Hangzhou landed right in the thick of India’s build-up to the ODI World Cup at home, which should have made skipping the Asian Games again the obvious call. 

It sent a full squad anyway, men’s and women’s both, and that single decision is basically why Asian Games cricket suddenly matters to Indian fans at all. Ten-plus years after the sport joined the program, India finally showed up. That’s the debut everyone’s now building on catch it up now on Winexchange.

Only Once Before Has This Happened: Hangzhou 2023

Ruturaj Gaikwad was leading his young team wearing the captain’s armband, and his side was unbeatable in all matches which it managed to complete. The first setback came against Nepal in the quarterfinals. Bangladesh lost to India heavily in the semifinal, almost guaranteeing India a medal without having to play the final.

And then, India’s final match, against Afghanistan on October 7, 2023, never took place. Rain sat over Hangzhou all day. Once officials accepted that no cricket was getting played, they reached for the tournament’s placement rule instead of forcing a result out of nothing. 

India had the better record across the group stage and the knockouts, so gold went to India, silver to Afghanistan, and neither team faced a single ball in the match that supposedly decided it all.

Strange way to win a gold medal, honestly. Several Afghanistan players said exactly that in public afterward, and it’s hard to blame them for feeling like a tiebreaker buried in the rulebook shouldn’t decide a final nobody got to watch. None of that changes what’s printed in the record books, though. A gold is a gold, rain or no rain.

India’s 2023 Asian Games Cricket Results

Match	Opponent	Stage	Result
1	Nepal	Quarter-final	India won
2	Bangladesh	Semi-final	India won
3	Afghanistan	Final	Washed out, no play possible
Medal	N/A	N/A	Gold for India, silver for Afghanistan

 

So Has India Actually Won Cricket Gold at the Asian Games?

Yes, once, and that one gold is also the only medal India’s men have ever collected in this event. Simple math, since 2023 is the only tournament India has entered. 

People still argue about whether a title settled by rain counts the same as one settled by bat and ball, and that’s a fair question to keep asking. But strip away the debate and what’s left is a perfect scoresheet, one tournament, one gold. That’s the number Shreyas Iyer’s squad carries into Japan.

Round Two: The 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games

India walks into this tournament as champion for the first time, and that changes the whole feel of the campaign. There’s a medal to protect now, not just chase, and unlike three years ago, nobody can call this squad untested at the format. 

The matches are taking place in Korogi Sports Park in Nisshin. India does not participate in the preliminary stage at all and advances to the quarter-finals after the completion of the preliminary stage on September 26. 

The captain of the team is Shreyas Iyer and the vice-captain is Tilak Varma. The team of fourteen consists of experienced white ball players along with two new players.

These include Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan, Shivam Dube, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, Ravi Bishnoi, Jasprit Bumrah, Harshit Rana, and Arshdeep Singh.

 

Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Vipraj Nigam round it out, two names getting talked about a lot in Indian T20 circles right now.

Also check how net run rate in cricket is important to win a tournament 

India’s 2026 Asian Games Cricket Schedule

Stage	Date	Time (IST)
Quarter-final	September 28	10:00 AM
Semi-final, if India qualifies	October 1	10:00 AM
Bronze medal match, if applicable	October 3	5:30 AM
Gold medal match, if India qualifies	October 3	10:00 AM

 

Why This Second Appearance Actually Matters

One previous tournament isn’t much of a sample size, and everyone involved knows it. This year is really the first chance to find out whether 2023 said something real about India’s team, or whether it was mostly a gold medal that fell into India’s lap because of bad weather in China. 

There’s no washout to lean on this time. Win the matches or don’t, the tag of defending champion only holds up if the results back it. A few of the younger names in this squad are also treating the whole event as an audition for bigger things down the road, which gives the tournament a bit more stakes than the medal table alone suggests.

Bottom Line

India’s men have played Asian Games cricket exactly once before now, at Hangzhou in 2023, and turned that lone appearance into gold under circumstances nobody would call typical. The 2026 Aichi-Nagoya Games are only India’s second crack at the event, full stop. Shreyas Iyer’s squad has a real shot at turning a two-tournament history into an actual track record, and that process starts for real on September 28. Stay tuned with Winexchange.