Late last month New Zealand followed Australia in turning down the offer from the Pakistan Cricket Board to tour Pakistan. Both sides will now play out the entirety of their tours in the UAE, after refusing the proposal to play the T20 legs in Pakistan.
“At the end of the day it came down to following the advisory and the security reports we’d obtained.” Greg Barclay, the New Zealand Cricket Chairman said.
“There’s no doubt [the PCB] are disappointed. I think they saw a tour by a country like New Zealand as being a great precedent for them to start to build an international programme back in Pakistan.”
Yes, they absolutely did. After the brief tours of the ICC World XI, Sri Lanka – the team that was targeted in the 2009 attack – and West Indies, Pakistan has been hoping for progress and indeed wants more teams to tour the country, even if for a similarly short period of time.
NZ tour of Pakistan, 2002
With New Zealand and Australia being the only sides that Pakistan is scheduled to host till next year’s ODI World Cup, this means that the local fans would have to wait long for more international cricket. However, the fourth season of the Pakistan Super League in springtime next year looks set to feature more matches at home.
That means the next likely team to tour Pakistan would be Bangladesh, which is slated to play a full series hosted by Pakistan at the end of next year. The PCB would perhaps try to squeeze in another short T20 series between now and then and try to convince Bangladesh for a longer tour, because only that – coupled with more PSL matches at home – would count as progress in terms of sustained international cricket in Pakistan.
ICC World XI
Following the 2009 bus attack on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore, Zimbabwe were the first international side to tour Pakistan in May 2015, playing ODI and T20 series. That tour itself saw a blast take place outside Gaddafi Stadium in the penultimate ODI match.
With Lahore hosting the PSL final in March 2017, that along with the World XI side led by South African skipper Faf du Plessis and featuring some of the biggest names in the game touring Pakistan in September, proved to be the turning point for the resumption of cricket in Pakistan. Sri Lanka played a T20 in October, with the West Indies playing a three-match T20 series in Karachi in April – after the city had hosted this year’s PSL final along with two playoffs in Lahore.
Truth be told, the Sri Lanka and West Indies tours were marred by major pullouts. Now with Australia and New Zealand completely turning down the prospect of playing any match in Pakistan, it is evident that there is still a long way to go before regular international cricket is hosted by the country.
Pakistan in New Zealand earlier this year
The gravity can be gauged by the fact that the NZC didn’t even send any representatives to confirm the security situation in the country in the three months that they were given to analyse it. Australia, of course, had immediately replied in the negative.
“We’re very sympathetic to the plight they find themselves in, we’re a member of the ICC, we’re very aware that the ICC are trying to facilitate more international cricket in Pakistan and we’re very supportive of that,” Barclay said.
Pakistan cricket would need a lot of support from the ICC and other nations. Even more importantly it would need massive support from the upcoming government.
Let’s hope that it doesn’t take any decision, which undoes the indubitable progress that Pakistan has made on all cricket fronts.
