Bahrain

The Rwanda Tri-Nation T20I Series in 2025 came after years of near misses, Bahrain finally converting a run of qualifying appearances into a trophy on foreign soil. It followed a runner-up finish at the ACC Men's Challenger Cup in 2023 and a run to the semi-finals of that year's T20 World Cup Qualifier, results that marked the team's steadiest stretch since it broke through in 2009 by beating Guernsey in the final of the ICC World Cricket League Division Seven.

Cricket in Bahrain predates the national side by decades: the earliest recorded match on the island dates to 1932, played by workers connected to the Bahrain Petroleum Company. The Awali Cricket Club, set up by the company in 1935, remains the traditional home of the domestic game, and the Bahrain Cricket League that grew out of that community has run since 1981. The national team itself did not take the field until October 1979, when it met Kuwait at an invitational tournament, and it plays in maroon and white, the colours of the Bahraini flag.

Rizwan Butt has taken more wickets than anyone to have played for Bahrain, past 140, while Fiaz Ahmed sits atop the run-scoring lists with more than 1,800. Sohail Ahmed's batting average of 42.19 is the best of any regular. None of that has translated into a settled fixture list: Bahrain has no international-standard ground of its own and plays most home matches away, commonly at the Al Amerat Cricket Stadium in Muscat, a ground that holds a few thousand at most. Matches against Kuwait and Oman, the closest thing the side has to rivals, are usually folded into the Gulf T20I Championship rather than staged as standalone fixtures at home. The Asian Games podium and the ACC Men's Premier Cup, where Bahrain's best finish remains a group-stage exit, are still out of reach.