Cambodia were forced to forfeit their games at the ACC Men's Challenger Cup after they were deemed unable to field full teams for the tournament. The competition, which is being held in Singapore, saw three Cambodian players denied visas to Singapore upon arrival in the country. An injury to a fourth player left them unable to field a side. It means Indonesia and Uzbekistan, the other two teams in their group, went through to the quarter-finals.
It is not clear why Cambodia's players were refused visas. ESPNcricinfo reached out to representatives of the Cricket Association of Cambodia (CAC), but did not receive a response.
Cambodia, who were awarded Associate member status by the ICC in 2022, played their first official T20I in 2023 in the South East Asian Games, which they hosted in Phnon Penh. At the time, Cambodia's team featured 13 naturalised players from India or Pakistan, with the players receiving their Cambodian passports just days before the start of the tournament. That included captain Luqman Butt, who had spent the bulk of his domestic career playing in Pakistan.
Cambodia went on to win gold medals in the T20I, T10 and the 50-over tournaments. Malaysia, whom they defeated in the final of the T20I competition, later criticised the presence of the naturalised players, and particularly the timing of the players receiving Cambodian citizenship.
"We noted that the passports were issued on April 23 this year, and the first match was played six days later, whereas the deadline for the shortlist was March 3," the Malaysian Cricket Association said in an article for The Straits Times in 2023. "This begs the question, can amendments be made for as many as 13 players? If so, what is the purpose of a shortlist that was submitted beforehand?"
As such the entirety of the round-robin of the Men's Challenger Cup this year effectively served the purpose of eliminating just one side. There were ten teams in the competition, with eight going through to the quarter-finals. That meant two groups featured just two sides, both of whom were guaranteed passage regardless of the outcome, with Cambodia's forfeiture de facto rendering that true for their group, too. In the only other active three-team group, Singapore and Maldives edged out Myanmar for a quarter-finals berth.