Daily Times

LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has signed a five years bilateral contract with Cricket West Indies (CWI) for a Twenty20 International series. This was revealed by PCB chairman Najam Aziz Sethi during a press conference at Gaddafi Stadium here Saturday. “Pakistan and West Indies cricket boards have signed an agreement to play a series of T20 matches each year, for the next five years, in Pakistan and in the USA, subject to the availability of dates and venues,” Sethi announced. He said speculation about West Indies’ refusal to play in Pakistan needed to stop. “This is an important announcement; I didn’t want to delay it any further. All of you are interested in the West Indies’ tour, so I want to clarify the situation,” Sethi remarked. West Indies were supposed to tour the country in November for a three-match T20I series as announced earlier by the PCB chairman, but due to inclement smog condition in Lahore their visit was deferred to March next year. The clarification from the PCB chairman came after speculations about West Indies started surfacing, which claimed that the players were not “happy with security”, were “unavailable” and were “demanding extra money”, but Sethi shot all of the rumours down. “I wanted to reveal this so that it would become clear that the visits to Pakistan by international teams are not one-time affairs, and the five-year contract with West Indies explains our position,” he maintained.

He claimed that after Sri Lanka’s visit last month, a lot other countries had also shown interest in visiting Pakistan. “Many countries have contacted us for, but we are reluctant to talk to any of them at the moment because our calendar is quite packed at the moment,” he stated. “The CWI has confirmed that the full national team will visit Pakistan in 2018 and participate in three T20I matches on March 29, 31 and April 1. There were talks that the series should be played in November, but the weather conditions were not good, so we didn’t take any risk,” said the 70-year-old. Revealing details, Sethi said the PCB would start everything from March next year. “The first series will be in Pakistan, and then we will go to America to play the reciprocal series,” he said. “The series in America will be a tri-nation affair which will include Pakistan, West Indies and a third country.” When asked why did they choose the USA and not West Indies for the reciprocal tour, Sethi said: “It was their wish. They think holding a series in the USA is financially more feasible. And if you look at it, a three-nation tournament will attract a lot of interest.”

Both CWI and the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) gave their approval for the tour subject to the security situation in Pakistan remaining the same as it was during the World XI series and the solitary T20 Sri Lanka played in Lahore recently. “We have not had time to get through procedures and processes to get the tour scheduled in time, but we are still committed to support Pakistan cricket. Our intention is to return in March,” CWI chief executive officer Johnny Grave said. After hosting the World XI and Sri Lanka T20s successfully, the PCB was confident and keen to host West Indies too. Sethi had admitted recently that scheduling remained a concern for CWI. The PCB and the Punjab Government (Lahore being the capital) assured that the same level of security would be afforded to the West Indies team as was to the World XI and Sri Lankan contingents.

Published in Daily Times, November 12^th 2017.