The Asian Cricket Council (ACC) chief and BCCI secretary Jay Shah, on January 5, 2023, announced the cricket calendar for 2023-2024 along with the pathway structure. This included the Asia Cup 2023 which is scheduled for the month of September.
Pakistan is the original host of the Asia Cup this year but the BCCI is not keen on playing there owing to political tension between the two countries. Jay Shah already announced in October that Asia Cup will be moved out of Pakistan and India will not travel to the country for the tournament.
This led to a huge commotion between then PCB chief Ramiz Raja and the BCCI, with Raja taking an aggressive stance to the announcement of India not coming to Pakistan for the Asia Cup and had threatened that Pakistan will retaliate by not coming to India for the 2023 World Cup in October-November.
Raja's contention was that the decision to award Pakistan the hosting rights was taken by ACC's Board of Directors and Shah can't decide about shifting the tournament.
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The Asia Cup 2023 will be a 50-over affair and will have six teams involving India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and a qualifier team. Sri Lanka is the defending Asia Cup champions in the UAE after they beat Pakistan in the final. The tournament was played in the T20 format because of the ICC T20 World Cup in Australia.
Now current PCB chief Najam Sethi reacted to Jay Shah’s announcement of the calendar and called it unilateral in a sarcastic tweet.
"Thank you Jay Shah for unilaterally presenting ACC structure & calendars 2023-24 especially relating to Asia Cup 2023 for which Pakistan is the event host. While you are at it, you might as well present structure & calendar of our PSL 2023! A swift response will be appreciated," Sethi tweeted.
It has been reported that India wants the tournament shifted to UAE, as it had happened in 2018 when Pakistan refused to tour India for Asia Cup that year and it had to be shifted to UAE as well.
However, Pakistan says if Australia, England, and New Zealand can visit them for bilateral series, then why would they host an event in a neutral country.
(PTI inputs)
