Current Australia Test captain Tim Paine has said that to be totally honest, there might be some players who aren’t comfortable traveling to Pakistan, after the Pakistan Cricket Board, yesterday, announced details of Australia’s first tour of Pakistan since 1998.
Australia is scheduled to travel to the Asian country for 3 ODIs, one T20I, and 3 Tests, which will take place in March and April 2022. The Tests will take place in Karachi (3-7 March), Rawalpindi (12-16 March), and Lahore (21-25 March), while Lahore will be the venue for the four white-ball matches to be played from 29 March to 5 April.
“There’ll be some guys who will be happy to take the experts’ advice and others will want to know a bit more. If we’re totally honest, there might be some people who aren’t comfortable going regardless.
That’s happened before with tours going to other countries going back forever. Again there are issues that will I’m sure pop-up. We’ll discuss it, people get the right answers and feel comfortable, then we’ll get hopefully the best team we can. At the end of the day, it comes down to the individual,” Paine said on SEN on Tuesday morning.
Tim Paine was part of the World XI that had toured Pakistan in 2017, stated that he was both unnerved and reassured by the “extraordinary” security measures.
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“The security that we had on that tour was unlike anything that I’ve ever seen in my life,” Paine said. “We had helicopters overhead, roads shut down five kilometers around us, checkpoints like every kilometer into the ground, it was extraordinary.
The fact you’re seeing it and thinking to yourself it may be necessary can be a bit unnerving, but at the same time to see the planning and execution of it, with literally a couple of choppers above your bus 20-30 meters above your head was comforting but also unnerving at the same time,” he concluded.
Cricket Australia’s delegation will visit Pakistan to meet with PCB officials as well as provincial and federal authorities to discuss and finalize matters relating to team operations, logistics, security, and Covid-19 protocols.
(Cricket Pakistan inputs)
