India responsible for stagnant cricket ties: Shahryar Khan
Jun 28, 2016 at 7:31 PM
The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Shahryar Khan has again come up with the same old topic of resuscitating the cricketing ties between India and Pakistan. In a talk with The Dawn the PCB chairman said
“These series would have been played in India or a mutually agreed venue in a third country. The BCCI told PCB that they needed permission from the Indian government for these series and PCB agreed to wait for that but that permission never came through.”
“PCB even agreed to play India in Sri Lanka back in December but even that permission was not forthcoming from the Indian side and as a result, the series didn’t happen. It also showed that India had not met PCB’s conditions for accepting the Big 3 formula.”
Further adding to the matter he also blamed the Indian government and went onto say that “Pakistan government has never created any hurdles to this series and even at the time of the ICC World Twenty20 when all sorts of threats were being made, Pakistan team still participated in the tournament. It is the Indian government which is holding back progress on this series,”
He also counted the problems and also asked ICC to lay a helping hand to the PCB “The crux of the problem is that we cannot play home series against international sides which is denigrating towards us. We intend to propose that as we cannot play series at home and we are obliged to hire expensive venues in other countries, therefore, the ICC should help us overcome this problem.”
He seemed to be quite positive while speaking about the test captain Misbah-Ul-Haq and heaped praises on him “We are ranked number three in the Test rankings but we are way down in limited-overs rankings. I am hopeful that Misbah will lead the team on a successful tour and despite his age, we don’t see signs of a decline in his fitness and his capacity to play cricket. I will do everything I can to ensure Misbah carries on playing for and captaining Pakistan. Misbah and Younis Khan are the two fittest men in our young team.”
In the end Khan concluded by wishing luck to the captain and also expressed his desire to see Misbah continuing to lead the team in the upcoming series that Pakistan are scheduled to play “I hope this tour will be a successful one and Misbah will be ready to carry on his duties as Test team captain against Australia and West Indies etc,” he said.
India and Pakistan last played a bilateral series way back in January 2013 in India. Pakistan won the One-day series by 2-1 whereas the T20 series ended in a draw. The last time both teams met in an international contest was in T20 world cup 2016 where the Indian team registered a thumping win over the arch rivals.