LAHORE, 6 July 2005 — England have refused to play a Test in the troubled Pakistani city of Karachi during their upcoming winter tour, a senior Pakistani cricket official said yesterday.
The tourists will play one One-Day International in the southern city, and will decide in 10 days’ time whether to play a second there, Pakistan Cricket Board official Saleem Altaf said.
“England have refused to play a five-day Test in Karachi,” during their tour from Oct. 25 to Dec. 22, Altaf told reporters in the eastern city of Lahore.
The three Tests scheduled for the tour will now take place in Lahore, Faisalabad and Multan, he said. The northwestern border city of Peshawar has already been ruled out due to its close proximity to Afghanistan.
Lahore will also stage two one-day internationals. If England play only one limited overs match in Karachi then Rawalpindi will stage two.
“They have agreed to play one limited overs international in Karachi, but when we pressed for two back-to-back matches in Karachi, they said they will decide in the next 10 days,” Altaf said.
“They will go by what their security experts and the high commission in Islamabad told them.”
Two security experts from a private British company have spent the last week assessing security at various grounds in Pakistan, focusing on Karachi.
The England and Wales Cricket Board’s cricket operations manager John Carr and Players Association representative Richard Bevan arrived in Pakistan on Sunday and have been briefed by the British High Commission and PCB officials.
