Sri Lanka Likely To Travel Pakistan This Year For The Test Cricket
Jul 19, 2019 at 11:06 AM
According to the recent media reports, Sri Lanka national cricket team is likely to travel Pakistan to play at least one Test in this October.
In this October, Sri Lanka will play a two-match bilateral Test series against the hosts Pakistan. Initially, Pakistan agreed to host all those matches in the UAE, which is their alternative home venue. However, later, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) requested Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) to play the Test series in Pakistan.
Recently, the SLC has decided to send a security expert to Pakistan to assess the condition.
Since the 2009 terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers ahead of the day three of the Lahore Test, Pakistan has never organised a Test match. Since then, Pakistan national cricket team is playing their all home Tests and almost all the other home international matches in UAE.
If Sri Lanka decides to travel Pakistan for the upcoming Test series, then it will be the first Test cricket assignment on the Pakistan soil since 2009. However, Sri Lanka is likely to play one Test match in Pakistan.
Later in December 2019, Sri Lanka will travel to UAE to play three-match bilateral ODI series and three-match bilateral T20I series against Pakistan.
Pakistan has successfully organised some big limited-overs matches since 2015
Since the 2009 terrorist attack, Pakistan missed out to organise an international match till 2015. In May 2015, Zimbabwe successfully played a three-match ODI series and two-match T20I series in Pakistan.
Later in 2017, Pakistan successfully hosted three T20Is against ICC World XI and one T20I against Sri Lanka. In April 2018, Windies also successfully played a three-match T20I series in this country. While Lahore hosted the international matches from 2015 to 2017, Karachi returned to hosting the international matches in 2018.
On the other hand, the PCB is also organising some crucial matches of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) in Pakistan. After organising the PSL 2017 final in Pakistan, PCB has increased the number of matches in Pakistan in next editions. Pakistan successfully hosted the last three and the last eight PSL matches in 2018 and 2019 editions respectively.