Bahrain

In recent times Bahrain Cricket team is one of the newest additions to the ICC men's international. The team is governed rather organised by Bahrain Cricket Association (BCA), which became an International Cricket Council (ICC) affiliate member in 2001 and an associate member in 2017.

The game of cricket was introduced in Bahrain by the British in the early 20th century. The very first example of official cricket was recorded in 1932 when a cricket match was played between Royal British Air Force and Royal British Navy. After 3 years In 1935, the Awali Cricket Club was formed by the then British Oil Company which is now recognised as BAPCO (Bahrain Petroleum Company). The Bahrain Cricket Team first got some valuable recognition at the international level when they made their first international appearance in 1979, at an invitational tournament with Kuwait, Qatar, and Sharjah.

In the early 2000s, Bahrain Cricket Team made their first appearance in an Asian Cricket tournament by the Asian Cricket Council (ACC), in 2004 in Malaysia. Afterwards, they made several appearances in World Cricket League tournaments but unfortunately were downgraded to regional tournaments after a poor performance and finishing fifth at the 2013 Division Six event.

Historically in April 2018, the International cricket council decided to grant full Twenty20 International status to all their members. It was a great gesture for the Bahrain cricket team and also for their fans because, after that from 1 January 2019, all the T20 matches played by Bahrain were recognized as T20I matches.

After attaining eligibility to play T20 internationals in 2019, they made their T20I debut against Saudi Arabia on 20 January 2019. In their debut match, Bahrain defeated Saudi Arabia by 41 runs in the 2019 ACC Western Region T20. After that Bahrain played a total of 40 T20 international matches with a record of 17 wins, 20 losses, 2 ties, and 1 no result. The team reached the highest T20 ranking of 27 on 2 May 2020. They are currently ranked 28 in the International Cricket Council rankings.

Bahrain Cricket Team Owner

Bahrain Cricket Team is an international cricket team recognised by ICC so it is not under anyone's private ownership. But The Bahrain Cricket team is organised by the Bahrain Cricket Association (BCA). BCA was recognised as an affiliate member of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in 2001 and as an Associate member in 2017. Thereafter the Bahrain Cricket team began a brand new journey of international cricket.

Bahrain Cricket Team Brand Value

The Bahrain Cricket team started playing international cricket in recent times and sure enough, they are very unpopular amongst cricket fans. For this reason, the Bahrain Cricket team doesn't have any specific brand value mentioned anywhere on the internet. But considering that the quality of cricket of the Bahrain Cricket team will increase in the coming years, their brand value is only predicted to rise sharply soon as well. Any further information related to their brand value will be updated here soon.

Performance of Bahrain Cricket Team in 2022 ICC Men's T20 World Cup Global Qualifier A

Being a newborn team, they haven’t played many international matches in their entire cricketing history. But the development of international cricket is underway in Bahrain. In 2022, they played the 2022 ICC Men's T20 World Cup Global Qualifier A. It was a huge step for a country like Bahrain to grow cricket and the entire sports sector in future. In this qualifier, Bahrain played 3 group-stage matches with a record of 2 wins and 1 loss. Except that they placed 6th in the Qualifiers points table.

Season	ICC Men's T20 World Cup Global Qualifier performance
2022	6th place

On the debut match in the ICC T20 World Cup qualifiers, Bahrain faced Germany as their opponent. The hostile pace attack of Bahrain stopped the German batting lineup in just 106 runs. Captain Sarfaraz Ali's tremendous innings helped Bahrain to snatch an easy victory.

After the glorious victory, they marched to their next match against Ireland. No doubt that was the toughest match for them in the entire tournament. Batting first, Ireland put in a decent and challenging total of 157 on the scoreboard. Everything was under control until the Irish pace attack took some early wickets. They delivered an outstanding bowling spell that sent the batting team on backfoot. Ireland conquered the match by 21 runs.

After a quite balanced performance, Bahrain faced United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the ‘do-or-die’ match. Bahrain came to bat first and scored a fightable total of 172 runs. But in the chase, UAE fell short by 2 runs. Bahrain claimed a hard-fought victory.

Although Bahrain won two matches in their group stage, unluckily they ended up in 3rd place in group A for their poor net run rate (NRR). So they failed to advance to the semi-finals. But according to the tournament format, they had to play another two matches against the Philippines and Canada for the 7th and 5th position in the points table. Bahrain defeated the Philippines to get 7th place but failed to grab the match against Canada in the 5th place match. The journey of the Bahrain cricket team ended here in the tournament but surely returned home with lots of experience and match-winning lessons.

Throughout the tournament, the captain of Bahrain, Sarfaraz Ali's performance left a powerful statement in the tournament. He played some impactful innings for the team to win some crucial matches.

Stats of Bahrain National cricket team Players

With the captaincy of Sarfaraz Ali Bahrain has a long way to go and a lot more things to achieve. Besides that Bahrain Cricket Team has good batters like Haider Butt, Ahmer Bin Nisar, Sohail Ahmed, Yousif Wali, and David Matihas. Good quality all-rounders like Sarfaraz Ali and Junaid Aziz and some orthodox Bowlers like Imran Khan, Shahid Mahmood, Rizwan Butt, Sathaiya Veerapathiran, Imran Anwar, Zeeshan Abbas, Danish Jasnaik. As a team, they can achieve success soon.

Top Run Scorers for Bahrain Cricket Team

Name of the Player	Matches Played	Runs Scored	Average	Strike Rate
Sarfaraz Ali	37	834	24.52	155.30
Sohali Ahmed	18	625	52.08	129.13
Haider Butt	32	555	25.22	116.35
Imran Anwar	38	520	22.60	134.36
David Mathias	16	394	32.83	107.94

Top Wicket-Takers for Bahrain Cricket Team

Name of the Player	Matches Played	Wickets Taken	Average	Economy
Imran Anwar	38	37	24.75	7.93
Sathaiya Veerapathiran	26	33	20.96	8.20
Rizwan Butt	18	27	17.96	7.69
Sarfaraz Ali	37	27	24.48	7.13
Junaid Aziz	24	17	13.94	8.77

Being an underdog team in the Asian region the quality of cricket in Bahrain is still not up to the mark as compared to the big Cricket playing nations like England, New Zealand, Australia, Sri Lanka, India and many more. They still lack experience in the gentleman's game. But we believe that Bahrain has the potential needed to be not only a good team but also an impactful team very soon.