KARACHI: Bangladesh have agreed to tour Pakistan next month in the first visit by any country since armed militants attacked the Sri Lanka team bus in Lahore in 2009, Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Zaka Ashraf said yesterday.
“The Bangladesh board has conveyed to us their team’s visit is confirmed and they have also got approval from their board members. They have also sent us the time frame for the tour,” Ashraf told the Geo News Channel.
Eight Pakistanis were killed and six Sri Lanka players wounded when a dozen gunmen fired on their coach as they were being driven to the Qafdafi stadium.
It was the first major attack directed at athletes since the 1972 Munich Olympics when the pro-Palestinian Black September group killed 11 members of the Israeli team.
The Bangladesh Cricket Board agreed to send a team to Pakistan in April this year to play a Twenty20 and one-day international in Lahore. However, the Dhaka High Court issued a restraining order stopping the Bangladesh players from playing in Pakistan due to security concerns.
“I am pretty confident now this tour will take place and signal the return of international cricket to Pakistan,” Ashraf said.
“We will soon also be co-ordinating security arrangements for the tour with the provincial governments.”
NZ board to meet skippers
New Zealand Cricket (NZC) will meet with former skippers in a bid to improve communication within the national set-up in the wake of the controversy surrounding the handling of Ross Taylor’s demotion from the captaincy.
Taylor was stripped of the one-day and Twenty20 captaincy this month at the recommendation of head coach Mike Hesson following their tour of Sri Lanka and the disgruntled batsman then turned down an offer to continue as test skipper.
Former players criticized NZC for the controversy, forcing the board to make a public apology to the cricketer, who made himself unavailable for the South Africa tour.
Taylor’s absence and the unavailability of former skipper Daniel Vettori due to injury meant that opener Brendon McCullum, another former captain, was handed the reins of the team.
“Former captains will be invited to attend the meeting which is intended to be an annual event designed to provide quality input from both the former captains and the players who were part of their era in cricket,” NZC said in a statement.
“NZC has reached the conclusion that there was obviously misunderstanding and miscommunication between the parties involved,” the board’s Chief Executive David White said.
“We’ve already acknowledged mistakes were made on this issue and we have learned from those mistakes. Team management has given an undertaking to improve communication and to ensure nothing similar occurs again.
“The board and management of NZC make that same commitment. NZC believes it now serves no useful purpose to further rake over the events of the captaincy change. It is time to draw a line under the issue.”
