Pakistan Sports Minister objected India's refusal to travel for Asia Cup and threatened to boycott CWC
As per the schedule, the highly-anticipated India versus Pakistan encounter will be played at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on October 15. Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Kolkata are the other four venues where Pakistan’s matches have been allocated.
However, reports have stated that Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has set up a high level committee consisting of ministers, including Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto, to decide on the country’s participation in the ODI World Cup in India later this year.
Last week, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) had written to the country’s government, seeking official clearance to travel to India for the 50-over World Cup.
Now Mahmood, under whose tenure, Pakistan had toured India in 1999 and who had traveled to India in 1989 as manager of Pakistan team, said it made no sense to form this committee.
“The interesting thing is that no representative of the main stakeholder, the Pakistan Cricket Board is on the committee. While I agree that there is no justification for India not to tour Pakistan now but this is not the way things are done at the international level,” Mahmood said as per PTI.
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Mahmood said by forming this committee of ministers, the government had itself contradicted its policy of not mixing politics with sports.
“If you say that we are looking at the security situation before deciding to send a team to India, that makes sense, but to say openly that if India doesn’t come to Pakistan, then we will also not send a team to India for World Cup, is mixing both things, which we have never done.
When I was chairman in 1999, despite threats from India, we assessed the security situation for our team ourselves, by sending a delegation to India and advised the government we were willing to go to India,” he added.
He further added that the government should let the Pakistan team go to India for the World cup else the side and the board could face heavy sanctions and fines from the ICC.
Furthermore, he also said that whatever decision former PCB chief Najam Sethi took for the Asia Cup 2023 should be honored as well.
He said: “I expect Zaka Ashraf to face an uncomfortable situation, when he attends the ICC meetings later this week, because of the formation of this committee and the statement made by Minister, Ahsan Mazari.”
(PTI inputs)