Former captain Shahid Afridi has advised the PCB to refrain from sending the national team to India for any cricket competition, including ICC tournaments, unless India agrees to send its team to Pakistan. Speaking at the Urdu conference at the Karachi Arts Council, Afridi stressed the need for the Pakistan Cricket Board to take a tough stance on cricket relations with India and said that Pakistan has to become self-reliant in taking strong decisions, especially regarding participation in ICC events. In relation. Like the Champions Trophy. He said, “Pakistan cricket should be strong and self-reliant and take strong principled decisions. If India cannot come and play in Pakistan then there is no reason for us to go and play in India.”
The Champions Trophy is scheduled to be held in Pakistan between January and March next year.
India has refused to play its Champions Trophy matches in Pakistan and instead sought to play the tournament in a ‘hybrid model’, allowing it to play its matches at a neutral venue.
The global governing body for the game has reached a consensus to hold the Champions Trophy in a hybrid model, with India agreeing “in principle” to do its part, according to a top source in the International Cricket Council (ICC). Permission will be given to play the match in Dubai. Similar arrangement in multilateral events till 2027.
Afridi said the PCB has taken the right stance on the Champions Trophy as India again decided not to send its team to Pakistan for the Champions Trophy, which led to a huge delay in the announcement of the final schedule and venues.
“Even the ICC now has to decide whether its responsibility is to ensure that every member country gets a chance to play cricket or whether it just wants to make money,” he said.
Afridi, who is the father-in-law of fast bowler Shaheen Shah Afridi, believes that the biggest problem of Pakistan cricket is that the policies change with every new president.
“When Shaheen was made the Pakistan T20 captain, I was against it and I said that the board should have made Muhammad Rizwan the captain because he was the best choice. But once they made Shaheen the captain, it was difficult for the PCB to make him the captain. Removing him from the post was also wrong.” After just one series it affected them,” he said.
Afridi expressed confidence in young Sam Ayub’s ability to excel across all formats, but lamented that many talented players like him have failed to progress due to the flawed grooming system in Pakistan cricket.
“We have a lot of talent in Pakistan but we also lose a lot of these talents because we do not have a system to identify such players and groom them properly,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Topics mentioned in this article
