Brunei Cup: The Game of Champion WON’T return this year.

In a recent phone interview with Alan Lim of MVP Event Management Co, the organizer of the annual basketball tournament held every August, that this years anticipated Brunei Cup has been cancelled and expected to return next year.

According to Alan that there are few reasons why it was cancelled; First, Ramadan, the month of fasting is expected to begin on or around August 22, 2009 and will finish on or around September 20, 2009. Fasting month comes early this year and coincides with the schedule of the games.

2nd, Due to the rise of H1N1 cases here locally, it’s a precautionary move to cancel the said event since it’s an invitational tournament in the region; teams coming all the way from Australia, Jordan, South Korea, Singapore, China, Saudi Arabia and The Philippines are invited to participate. 

3rd, If they move the schedule to a later time this year after the Ramadan, PBA teams from the Philippines won’t be available to join. This is because of the drastic change of the seasonal calendar in the PBA; hence they reduced the number of conferences from three to two and change the start of the season from March to July for the Fiesta Conference were imports are allowed to play and October to February for the Philippine Cup, called All-Filipino Conference previously. Conflict of the date as well.

Brunei Cup official site here.

In related news, One of The Brunei Cup powerhouse team, Darwin Resort All-Stars under the Darwin Basketball Association of Australia is set to accept an official invitation to field a team at the International Challenge in Indonesia late this year. Source: ntnews.com.au