Najam Sethi, the chief of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), revealed how N Srinivasan-led BCCI pulled out of a written agreement between the two boards where India was supposed to play 10 matches against Pakistan in 2015.
Sethi claimed he was invited to a meeting in India during Srinivasan’s tenure as the BCCI chief. However, the meeting got canceled and he had to receive backlash from the media and board members when he returned to Pakistan.
“Mr. Srinivasan came to me and said, no, you have to be the 10th. It has to be unanimous. I said, what’s on the table for me? And then we sat down and in three hours, we wrote this contract whereby India was supposed to play Pakistan in 2015 in Dubai and play about 10 matches. And then in October, when the time came around, India backed out. The BCCI backed out.
“I said this is how we were humiliated when we were asked to come to Mumbai for a meeting with the BCCI. When we landed at the hotel and waited for them to pick us up and take us to the board, they didn’t even come to say hello to us. The police came in and said, sorry, the meeting’s been cancelled, you have to go back, and they escorted us back to the airport,” Sethi told news18.
Sethi said since that time they have developed trust issues with the BCCI and India.
“When we returned to Pakistan, we were tarred and feathered. The government went for us. The media went for us. There were calls for the resignation of the then-chairman, Mr. Shahryar Khan. It was a very terrible situation for us. I was screwed, frankly, because I’m the one who signed that contract. Everybody had said to me, India will never honour its contract. And I said, come on, it’s not as bad as that,” Sethi added.
Even if Mr. Shah was to give us a written letter that India will play Pakistan next year, it has no value for us: Najam Sethi
Najam Sethi, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, has gained attention for his comments regarding how the Asia Cup 2023 will be run. The BCCI has insisted that Team India won’t visit Pakistan, therefore the six-team event is still in a state of disarray. The BCCI has not yet responded to the PCB’s “hybrid model,” which offers India the chance to play all of its games in the UAE.
Back in February, Sethi spoke at length with BCCI secretary Jay Shah on the sidelines of the Asian Cricket Council’s executive board meeting in Bahrain. However, the PCB chief hasn’t received a satisfying response from Shah.
“During the meeting in Bahrain, Jay Shah and I had a three-hour long one-on-one in a very comfortable surrounding where he was lodged. And for an hour or so, we didn’t talk about any bilateral series. We talked about everything else under the sun and then we came to the main subject. I realised that he didn’t know much about what had happened in the past between India and Pakistan. So I said, OK, listen, do you know what happened in 2014 when Mr. Srinivasan signed a contract with us and then let us down by not playing? He wasn’t aware of it,” he added.
PCB is building narrative and pressure on BCCI to come and play in Pakistan and has threatened to pull out of Asia Cup and even World Cup in India.