Hong Kong have no time to blink against Nepal

Hong Kong will have to hit the ground running and defeat Nepal first-up today if they are to avoid meeting gold medal favourites Sri Lanka in the quarterfinals of the men's Twenty20 cricket competition.

The team led by Najeeb Amar is pooled with Nepal and the Maldives in the preliminary round. Win both games and in theory they will have an easier path into the medal rounds as they are likely to meet Afghanistan in the quarterfinals.

"We would rather play Afghanistan than Sri Lanka and to do this we have to top our preliminary group," said Hong Kong manager Glyn Davies.

Cricket is making its debut at the Asian Games and six associate countries, the other three are China, Malaysia and Singapore, will play a preliminary round to decide who advances to meet the big boys - Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. This four have already earned direct berths into the quarterfinals.

With India not participating, Sri Lanka looks the favourites on paper with a team peppered with ex-test and one-day international players. Jehan Mubarak leads a strong side which also includes five players who were part of the squad at this month's Hong Kong Sixes - Jeewantha Kulatunga, Indika de Saram, Kaushalya Weeraratne, Dilhara Lokuhettige and Chintaka Jayasinghe.

"There is no room for error in this format as the women found out," Davies said. "It is 'wham, bam, thank you Ma'am' type of cricket and we have to get off to a strong start. There is no time to blink."

"Presuming the Maldives are weak, we should finish in the quarterfinals but we would like to avoid meeting Sri Lanka," Davies said.

The men's team had a training game before arriving in Guangzhou and Jamie Atkinson was in fine knick scoring a quickfire 70.

"Everyone seems to be in good shape and there is a confident mood in the camp. If we play with discipline and to our potential, we should be okay," Davies added.