Pakistan Cricket Board CEO Wasim Khan has made a U-turn on his earlier reported statements that Pakistan will not play the 2021 T20 World cup to be held in India, if India doesn’t play the upcoming Asia Cup 2020, to be hosted by Pakistan.
“This has been completely taken out of context. Even though we would still want to host the Asia Cup in Pakistan, the Asian Cricket Council needs to decide on what it will do about the matches involving India,” Khan told Sportstar.
Earlier, it was mentioned that PCB will withdraw from the ICC event to be hosted by India in 2021 if BCCI doesn’t allow the Indian team to travel to Pakistan for the ACC event in September.
“It’s absolutely incorrect. What I would like to say is that we are concerned about security issues and also there could be issued in attaining visas. But we are confident that things will ease out over the period of time,” Khan said, making it clear that there’s no question of pulling out from the T20 World Cup - which is an ICC event.
India had hosted the Asia Cup at a neutral venue - in the UAE - in 2018, and this time too, there is uncertainty on whether India would get clearance from the government to travel to Pakistan owing to security issues.
“These are the issues, which the ACC will have to look into and decide accordingly,” Khan added when asked about holding matches at a neutral venue.
(sportstar.thehindu.com inputs)
