Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief Ramiz Raja, on Friday, made quite a noise by saying that if India doesn’t travel to Pakistan for the Asia Cup 2023, then the Men in Green will not travel to India for the 2023 ODI World Cup and it will suffer from attendance shortage.
This came after Jay Shah, who is also the ACC president confirmed that India will not travel to Pakistan for Asia Cup next year.
As a retort to this, Ramiz threatened to pull out of the ODI World Cup 2023, scheduled to be hosted in India, warning the BCCI.
Speaking to Urdu News on Friday, Ramiz said: “If Pakistan doesn't take part in the World Cup scheduled in India next year, who will watch it? We have a clear stand: If the Indian team comes here then we will go for the World Cup. If they don't come then they can play the World Cup without us. We will adopt an aggressive approach.
Our team is showing performance. I've always said we need to improve the economy of Pakistan cricket, and that can only happen when we perform well. In the 2021 T20 World Cup, we beat India. We beat India in the T20 Asia Cup. In one year, the Pakistan cricket team defeated a billion dollar economy team twice."
However, this threat didn’t sit down well with Indian cricket team fans, especially the statement of Pakistan not coming to India for the World Cup will mean a loss of revenue for the ICC and BCCI.
Fans on Twitter shared pictures from the World Cup in Australia showing that while the group-stage match between India and Zimbabwe had 82507 spectators, the final, between Pakistan and England, had 80462 fans at the venue.
Here are some more reactions from fans on Ramiz Raja’s statement:
