Key BCCI, PCB officials meet in Dubai; speculation rife over bilateral series

Even as the meeting between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan got cancelled leading to a controversy, the one between some key officials of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) in Dubai went ahead on Saturday. The meeting featured four members each from the two boards and went on for more than an hour after a board meeting of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC).

There was apparently no discussion about the resumption of the halted cricketing ties between the two countries in the meeting which mainly focused on the distribution of the ACC funds to the members, a report in Pakistan’s daily Dawn said. The meeting was supposed to have featured talks over a bilateral series between India and Pakistan. It was attended by the new chairman of the PCB, Ehsan Mani and Chief Operating Officer Shubhan Ahmed and BCCI’s acting secretary Amitabh Chaudhry and Chief Executive Officer Rahul Johri.

India-Pakistan bilateral cricket has stopped for a while

India and Pakistan last played a bilateral Test series in 2007-08 and bilateral ODI and T20I series in 2012-13. They have been playing each other only in multilateral tournaments. Before the encounters in this Asia Cup, the two sides last played in the Champions Trophy played in England in June last year.

The report said that none of the two boards agreed to throw any light on the meeting’s outcome and whether a compromise formula could be reached ahead of the International Cricket Council’s dispute committee hearing which is scheduled to be held in early October.

It was also learnt that none of the boards agreed to address the issues pertaining to the scheduling of the matches in the current edition of the Asia Cup. India and Bangladesh have played back-to-back games in this tournament, something which did not impress their captains and supporters.

Also during the meeting, Atif Marshal, outgoing chairman of the Afghanistan Cricket Board, introduced Azizullah Fazli, their new president, to the delegates present at the meeting.

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