Daily Times

WELLINGTON: New Zealand Cricket (NZC) Chief Executive David White on Monday expressed willingness to discuss the restaging of the Pakistan series the Black Caps abandoned last week, but said talks of touring the country again were premature considering the team’s schedule was already “pretty tight”. The Black Caps devastated Pakistan’s cricket fraternity on September 17 after opting out of their tour of Pakistan minutes before the first ODI was to be played. They had cited a ‘security threat’ as the reason without divulging any further. In a new report, New Zealand media website Stuff quoted White as saying: “We’ve got a very close working relationship with Pakistan Cricket. We’d like to think that over the next few days, weeks and months that we’ll work through this to ensure that we play the content that we’ve missed out on and we continue our close working relationship. As we know they’re a very passionate cricketing nation and they’re obviously disappointed. We understand their disappointment,” he added. According to the report, the NZC chief was hopeful the matches would be rescheduled but was not sure about when as the Future Tours Programme was already “pretty tight”. Regarding compensating the PCB for lost revenue, White said the issue would be discussed in due course. He hoped that the decision to abandon the tour would not be held against NZC when the time came for Pakistan to tour New Zealand.