The tournament, in Ipoh from Aug 24-Sept 1, also doubles up as a World Cup Qualifier with only the champion making the grade.
The South African had earlier named 16 players, all of whom had played in the World League Semi-finals in Johor Baru, and left two spots vacant -- one of which belonged to the late Chua Boon Huat.
Yesterday, after completing a five-day training stint at the tournament venue, he named Azreen Rizal, Jivan Mohan and Ramadhan Rosli as the probables.
“We completed our Training Camp in Ipoh where the full squad attended and worked very hard together.
“We are playing at home and therefore want to make full use of this small advantage by naming the final two positions in the Asia Cup team as late as possible.
“We will name the two players after completion of the warm-up game against India on Aug 21,” said Revington.
South Korea might be the only Asian team who would have qualified for the World Cup before the start of the Asia Cup, depending on the Pan American Cup final between Argentina and Canada on Saturday.
If Argentina, who have already qualified for the World Cup, win the Pan American Cup, World League Semi-finals fourth placed South Korea will be handed the ticket to the Hague, Netherlands World Cup next year.
After Korea, the ball moves to Spain’s court and they need to be among the semi-finalists in the Euro Championships from Aug 17-25, for Malaysia’s turn to appear in the Oceania Cup list.
Malaysian team manager George Koshy however, wants to live the World Cup dream by becoming Asia Cup champions for the first time.
“When we failed to make the semi-finals of the World League, it became crystal clear to us that we had two options to qualify for the World Cup -- either hope and pray that the teams that qualified via the World League (except Asia of course) will become continent champions or we needed to win the Asia Cup.
“Although the former will ease the pressure on the team but the latter is what the team is striving for. So, we must utilise home ground advantage to qualify and live our World Cup dream.”
For the record, Malaysia has only touched bronze in the Asia Cup.
However, the current qualification structure is much kinder to teams like Malaysia.
“The current qualification structure is so much fairer to teams like ours as compared to having to play in qualifying tournaments where only a single team qualifies,” said George Koshy.
And with South Korea looking the best best to be qualifiers before the Asia Cup -- Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Japan, Taiwan, Bangladesh and Oman will be in an intense battle in Ipoh for the gold medal.
