Agencies
Mumbai :New Zealand Cricket has refused to tour Pakistan for a T20 international series later this year, local media reported .
What would have been the Black Caps’ first tour to Pakistan in 15 years, won’t be happening, said an official from New Zealand Cricket.
“At the end of the day it came down to following the advisory and the security reports we’d obtained.” NZ Cricket chairman Greg Barclay told NEWSHUB.
New Zealand are scheduled to play Pakistan in the Green Shirts’ ‘adopted home ground’ of United Arab Emirates in October in three Tests, three one-day internationals and three Twenty20 matches.
The Pakistan Cricket Board had hoped to convince New Zealand Cricket officials to move the T20 leg of the series to Pakistan, where international cricket has been slowly returning after a hiatus of nine years.
“There’s no doubt they (Pakistan Cricket Board) are disappointed. I think they saw a tour by a country like New Zealand as being a great precedent for them to start to build an international programme back in Pakistan,” Barclay continued.
“So they’re disappointed but they’re good guys, we get on really well with Pakistan, and I think they’re fully accepting of the decision that we’ve reached.”
New Zealand last visited Pakistan in 2003, a year after a bomb blast outside the team’s hotel in Karachi ended their tour prematurely.
Asked if New Zealand players were prepared to go to Pakistan and whether New Zealand Cricket would have been able to send a team, Barclay said, “I think that probably would have been difficult for a variety of reasons. We fortunately didn’t get to the point where we had to have those discussions.”
“We’re very sympathetic to the plight they find themselves in, we’re a member of the ICC, we’re very aware that the ICC are trying to facilitate more international cricket in Pakistan and we’re very supportive of that.
“But all circumstances considered, we just decided circumstances weren’t right for us to tour at the moment.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Kashmir Monitor staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
