News Analysis |
A day after the first match of the historic Independence Cup took place in Lahore, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) announced that West Indies will tour Pakistan in November, thus boosting the country’s chances of hosting regular international cricket. West Indies will play three T20 matches in Lahore.
Pakistan is back to normalcy is compromised when the world is shown heavy deployments of forces, air surveillance and multi-layered security cordons
“The agreement with the West Indies Cricket Board has been finalized and done and they have confirmed they will come to Lahore in November to play three T20 Internationals,” PCB chairman Najam Sethi said. He said that the itinerary will be announced soon.
Earlier, Srilanka had also agreed to play a one-off T20 in October at Lahore. Sethi said that he will convince Srilanka to play two matches instead of one. If these two back to back tours eventually do take place, it will be the first time since 2009 that Pakistan will host an international cricket season at home. Ever since the attack on the Srilankan cricket team, Pakistan has been forced to play its home series in the UAE.
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Star cricketer Shahid Afridi took exceptions to extra measures taken to beef up security, saying that it sends all the wrong signals to the international audience
Sethi said the tour by the West Indies is an important milestone for it would be a proper bilateral series in Pakistan, paving the way for the PCB to negotiate with other cricket playing nations.
He was also confident that South Africa will tour Pakistan. He said that since five players of the South African team are in the World XI squad, the PCB will hold talks with Cricket South Africa (CSA) to send its full squad.
There is a constant complaint as to why only Lahore is hosting these far and few matches. Sethi addressed this issue while talking to a private channel yesterday. He said, “Right now we are compelled to play only in Lahore but obviously with time we will schedule matches at other Test venues like Karachi, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, and Multan.” He also confirmed that Karachi will host at least 4 matches of next year’s PSL.
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Sethi said that he will convince Srilanka to play two matches instead of one. If these two back to back tours eventually do take place
However, Sethi conceded that security is water tight because risks cannot be taken at this stage. Analysts point out that wrong optics are disseminated when the media shows excessive security to the world. Star cricketer Shahid Afridi took exceptions to extra measures taken to beef up security, saying that it sends all the wrong signals to the international audience.
It is poignant because the aim of telling the world that Pakistan is back to normalcy is compromised when the world is shown heavy deployments of forces, air surveillance and multi-layered security cordons.