PCB chief Najam Sethi clears talks about hosting Ireland later this year

Pakistan and Ireland will only meet in the next FTP, which will get effective from 2019.

Ireland skipper William Porterfield | Getty Images

Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman, Najam Sethi, has cleared all rumors about hosting Ireland later this year, saying they will only meet in the next Future Tours Programme (FTP).

Sethi told Sportstar, “We are booked in various FTPs all the way through to next year. We are playing Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa this winter followed by the Pakistan Super League (PSL). The new FTP that will become operative from 2019 has noted fixtures between Pakistan and Ireland. The new FTP is not based on reciprocal matches but on set competition matchups. So we are not hosting Ireland as such.”

The PCB chief went on to further explain, “The understanding is that the open spaces in our FTP are where we would schedule additional bilateral content. Therefore we can host Ireland if and when both have free slots at the same time in the next year or two.”

Meanwhile, Cricket Ireland’s chief executive, Warren Deutrom, said that they will certainly tour Pakistan in the near future after discussing the situation with the ICC security.

Deutrom signed off by saying, “We have seen West Indies’ recent tour which went well. We’ve also seen that some PSL matches were held in Lahore and Karachi and were incident-free. Before taking any decision we will definitely discuss the situation with both the ICC security and Pakistan counterparts, but I can see that in the near future, a tour to Pakistan is possible.”

At the moment, both Pakistan and Ireland are busy in playing one-off Test in Dublin, which is the hosts' maiden Test.

 
 

By Rashmi Nanda - 12 May, 2018

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