The 2012 Asia Cup was an international cricket tournament held in Bangladesh from 11 to 22 March 2012. Like the previous event, the tournament featured the four Test-playing nations from Asia: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. India entered the tournament as the defending 2010 Asia Cup Pakistan won the tournament by beating Bangladesh in the final by 2 runs.

The Bangladesh men's national cricket team, popularly known as The Tigers, is administered by the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB). It is a Full Member of the International Cricket Council (ICC) with Test, One-Day International (ODI) and Twenty20 International (T20I) status. It became an associate member of the ICC in 1977, and competed in six ICC Trophies but performed inconsistently until 1997, which marked the year of their first major victory, winning the 1997 ICC Trophy held in Malaysia. This set the way of becoming a Test-playing nation, a journey which ended with success in 2000. It played its first Test match in November 2000 against India with a 9 wicket loss in Dhaka, becoming the 10th Test-playing nation.