Pakistan to host West Indies in the UAE after Lahore blast

It’s a known fact that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is as keen as ever to get teams to agree to play in Pakistan. They have been hosting home games in the UAE which hasn’t really been a profitable deal for the board but with security concerns looming large no cricket board except the Zimbabwe has agreed to send its team to the country for more than half a decade now. Reports by Deccan Chronicles suggest that the PCB was very close to breaking a deal with the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) to play limited overs series in the country but the recent bomb blast in Lahore has hindered it.

The head of PCB’s executive committee Najam Sethi said that the WICB was close to agreeing to play a few limited over games of the scheduled series in October-November in Pakistan. But things seem to have gone against it after the recent blast. Now the full series of Tests, ODIs and T20 matches will be hosted in the UAE.

“We had held successful negotiations with them. We had nearly convinced them that they needed to support Pakistan cricket by playing in Pakistan some of the limited over games scheduled in the UAE this year. We told them these gestures would help us convince other teams to also tour the country despite their security concerns,” Sethi said.

“We were close to inking a deal when the bomb blast took place at Gulshan Park in Lahore in March end and West Indies told us the security situation in Pakistan was not right for them to send their team at this time,” Sethi recalled.

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The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) is in a similar position after the Dhaka terror attacks. The England team that was slated to arrive in Bangladesh is reluctant now while the BCB is trying its best to convince them for the tour. Sethi feels that the perception about the security situation in Pak and Bangladesh is different and even if England agree to play in Bangladesh won’t change many things for them.

“People tend to look at the situation in Bangladesh and Pakistan with different perceptions. In Bangladesh, they see the recent incidents as lone wolf attacks or by radicals. In Pakistan the perception is that there are full scale terrorist attacks and no one is safe from them,” he said.

There is a sense of fear among teams after the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team. “But we have been doing our utmost to convince other Boards to support us in revival of international cricket in Pakistan. Our cricket has suffered a lot because of this factor since 2009,” he said.

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