Years have passed off since the last India vs Pakistan bilateral series have taken place, but there has been a very little clue regarding whether there will be any India vs Pakistan series in future. The latest political developments have worsened the situation, and there is news coming that India is undecided whether they will play Pakistan in the upcoming ICC tournaments.
And this stance from BCCI has infuriated Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) much. Senior PCB member Najam Sethi has gone out in the media and expressed the dissatisfaction that has crept in regarding BCCI not confirming India’s involvement in India vs Pakistan encounters in bilateral or ICC tournaments in the near future. In fact, Najam Sethi has even met Anurag Thakur during an ICC event in Cape Town, but he claimed that the President of the BCCI did not state anything clearly.
Former PCB Chairman Sethi said, “I met the BCCI President, Anurag Thakur on the sidelines of the ICC meeting in Capetown and asked him whether India wanted to play with Pakistan or not. He didn’t give a straight answer, and in fact, he has floated some ideas which it would not be fair to discuss at this forum now.”
He also brought to light the fact that India denying to play in a bilateral series against Pakistan has incurred a huge loss on them, but they do not want any compensation in the form of loan or grant for that. He remarked, “I told the ICC members that we had been suffering huge losses since the last nine years because India was just not ready to play with us as per the bilateral calendar.” He added, “I told them that because India was not playing with us we had suffered huge losses and it had hit our development plans for the sport in Pakistan.”
On that front, ICC has told them that they will set up a committee to take a look at the current scenario and will try to provide a solution to that. But Najam Sethi denied accepting such a proposal as he claimed that until and unless BCCI makes any comment on that there can’t be any development on that front.
Pakistan has already been facing troubles regarding the fact that all international teams have denied playing in Pakistan. This has already seen them making a great loss for that and India’s denial to play in a bilateral series has worsened the situation. Also, India denied to play against Pakistan in the women’s cricket tournament held in UAE and that aggravated the situation even more. Regarding that Najam Sethi has remarked, “The series in UAE was important since it will decide which four top teams qualify for the next women’s World Cup. The technical committee will now decide what to do whether to penalise India and award points to Pakistan.”
Najam has added that Pakistan has no problem with playing against India, but it’s India who has backed off. So it is going to really interesting to see what stance BCCI takes to answer to the current allegations that PCB has brought forward against India.
