 The Pakistan Cricket Board President, Ijaz Butt has said that there
was a chance that the bilateral series between India and Pakistan will be revived
on neutral grounds. He said that the Indian side had agreed to playing the Pakistanis
on the neutral venues, and the ICC has agreed to factor this in for the FTP which
will be made for the post-2012 era.
Originally, the FTP that had been sent out by the ICC did not consist of any
bilateral games between India and Pakistan due to the existing
tensions between the two countries, and the PCB had complained to the ICC about
the same. Already, the right to host the World Cup of cricket has been taken
away from Pakistan and not too many teams are keen to tour the country after
the Lahore bus attacks on the Sri Lanka side. Butt said that while it
was understandable that the governments of the two countries would want to review
the bilateral ties between the two sides, there needs to be some kind of an
initiative that needs to be shown by the ICC as well. He added that the Indian cricket board had shown interest in reviving the ties, and that is the reason
why he had appealed to the ICC to take that into account as well.
Butt said that the ICC had sent across a fresh draft of the FTP which consists
of two different sets of years; 2012 to 2016, and 2016 to 2020, where there
were matches planned between the two sides - tests, ODIs and T20Is.
India has had the upper hand in most of the recent bilateral series that have
been played between the two sides. The last one in India had seen the hosts
win the tests 1-0 and the ODIs as well, whereas India had lost the test series
in Pakistan 0-1, but thrashed them 4-1 in the ODIs.
In other news, Younus Khan has suffered from a hairline fracture on
his finger during the training session. However, the captain has played it down
by saying that it is a little fracture and should hopefully be alright by the
time the Pakistanis play their first game of the series. They play West Indies
first up before India and Pakistan meet each other in a high profile clash at
the Centurion. That, incidentally will be India's first game of the tournament.
India had beaten Pakistan the last time they played at Centurion in an ODI.
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