The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairperson Shaharyar Khan revealed that his board has been going through a financial crisis so they have requested ICC for the funds to help them recover.
Since 2009 terrorist attack on the team bus of the Sri Lankans in Lahore, Pakistan is deprived of international cricket. In 2015, Zimbabwe were the only international team who visited Pakistan.
However, Pakistan over the last six years adopted UAE as their new home venue and have been playing their home matches there. As they are not losing matches on their home soil they have to cope up with US$100 million in seven years, according to reports.
The chairman Shaharyar Khan said PCB had put forward the request to the ICC at the annual conference in Edinburg on Saturday.
“The PCB has circulated its case during the meeting that we deserve a fund as we incur losses by playing our home matches in UAE and the ICC has promised to consider the request,” said Shaharyar.
Even before the 2009 terrorist attack, major overseas teams made Pakistan a no-go area. After the 2008 Mumbai attack, Pakistan lost the hosting rights of 2011 World Cup and 2008 Champions Trophy too replaced in South Africa.
The PCB in recently requested BCCI to play bilateral series against them but the latter refused to play as the Indian government didn’t want Indian team to play against Pakistan until the culprit of 26/11 are punished.
“Look, we have also not been able to host any ICC events nor are we scheduled to host in the next allocation until 2023, so we are losing big money,” explained Shaharyar.
“The Pakistan Task team (formed in 2008) under Giles Clarke will also look into the matter of setting up funds and that will allow us to develop our cricket. We are also doing our best efforts to bring international cricket at home and hosting the Zimbabwe series was part of those efforts.”