LAHORE: Chairman Pakistan Cricket Board Najam Sethi has demanded that his side’s 2023 Men’s Cricket World Cup games are moved out of host country India if their arch-rivals refuse to travel to Pakistan for the Asia Cup in September.
According to a Cricbuzz report, the 48 matches of the ICC Men’s World Cup 2023 will be played between October 5 and November 19 across 12 venues in India. The event is set to begin on October 5 with a match between England and New Zealand in Ahmedabad – in other words, a team-and-venue encore of the 1996 WC edition.
Hosts India will play their first match against Australia in Chennai. On October 15, they will host arch rivals Pakistan in Ahmedabad, which will also host the final, on November 19.
The venues to feature ICC World Cup 2023 matches are Delhi, Dharamsala, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Guwahati, Indore, Kolkata, Mumbai, Rajkot, and Raipur while at least one of the two semi-finals may be played in Mumbai.
How to accommodate Pakistan appears to be at the heart of the crisis, with the nuclear-armed neighbours – both of them cricket-obsessed, but who have fought multiple wars since independence from Britain in 1947 – mired in diplomatic disputes.
Pakistan is itself hosting the Asia Cup, another 50-over tournament, in September, in which India normally participates. But the BCCI – the world’s richest and most powerful cricket body – has refused to travel to Pakistan for several years citing both the diplomatic tensions and the country’s challenging security situation.
It wants its Asia Cup games moved out of Pakistan – and Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Najam Sethi has demanded a reciprocal arrangement for the World Cup in an interview with The Indian Express newspaper on Friday.
“If India now wants to have a neutral venue and accepts the hybrid model, then we’ll use the same hybrid model in the World Cup,” he said. Pakistan would be willing to play their World Cup games in Bangladesh or any other venue acceptable to India, he said, calling it “a model that goes forward and resolves this political logjam” between the two countries. The BCCI is headed by Jay Shah, the son of India’s powerful home minister Amit Shah.
But Sethi, a former journalist turned cricket administrator, called on the Indian cricket body to “stand up” to New Delhi and insist on being allowed to travel to Pakistan as “it cannot cite security as an issue anymore”. There was no immediate reaction from the BCCI to Sethi’s comments.
