PCB refutes reports of conducting Australia Test series at one venue

Australia will be visiting Pakistan for an all-format bilateral series in March. This would be a huge morale-booster for Pakistan cricket as New Zealand and England had refused to tour the Asian country for a bilateral series last year ahead of the ICC T20 World Cup 2021. Just over a month before the highly-anticipated tour, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has made it clear that there is no proposal of playing all three Test matches against the visitors at a single venue.

The PCB decided to clarify the same after a report in an Australian newspaper Sydney Morning Herald claimed that negotiations are on with the Pakistan Cricket Board to ensure that all Test matches at played at the same venue, taking health and security reasons into consideration.

“The matches will be played in Karachi, Rawalpindi, and Lahore and the PCB is making necessary arrangements to ensure a safe and secure environment for the series”,  the cricket board was quoted as saying by Pakistan newspaper The News International.

PCB says the matches will be held as scheduled

At the same time, the PCB also made its stand clear on scheduling the upcoming Test series in three venues by mentioning that it is impossible to organize 19 days of international cricket at one ground.

The Aussies will be touring Pakistan in March for three-Test series, as many ODIs and a one-off T20I. The first Test will be played at National Stadium in Karachi on March 3 while the next two games will be played in Rawalpindi (March 12-16) and Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium (March 21-25) respectively.

The action then moves to three One Day Internationals on March 29, 31, and April 2 respectively, with all three games scheduled to be in Lahore. The one-off T20I will also be played at the Gadaffi Stadium on April 5.

Australia, after handing a 4-0 demoralizing defeat to arch-rivals England in the recently-concluded Ashes series down under, would be pumped up to make a mark on Asian soil. The Australians would be visiting Pakistan for a bilateral series for the first time since 1998. In the 1998-99 tour, the Aussies had won the three-match Test series 1-0 and whitewashed the Aamer Sohail-led side 0-3 in the following ODI series.