Former captain Shahid Afridi has advised the PCB not to send the national team to India for any cricket event, including ICC tournaments, unless India agrees to send its team to Pakistan. Speaking at the Karachi Arts Council Urdu Conference, Afridi emphasized the need for the Pakistan Cricket Board to take a strong stand on cricket ties with India, asserting that Pakistan must become self-reliant to make strong decisions particularly with regard to participation in ICC events. such as the Champions Trophy. “Pakistani cricket must be strong, self-reliant and take strong principled decisions. If India cannot come and play in Pakistan, there is no reason for us to play any event in India,” he said.
The Champions Trophy will take place in Pakistan between January and March next year.
India has refused to play its Champions Trophy matches in Pakistan and instead demanded that the tournament be played in a 'hybrid model', which would allow it to play its matches at a neutral venue.
According to a top source from the International Cricket Council (ICC), the sport's global governing body has reached a consensus to conduct the Champions Trophy in a hybrid model, which will allow India to play its share of matches in Dubai and “in principle ” agrees to a similar arrangement at multilateral events until 2027.
Afridi said the PCB had taken the right stand on the Champions Trophy after India again decided not to send its team to Pakistan for the Champions Trophy, leading to a long delay in announcing the final schedule and venues.
“Even the ICC now has to decide whether it is its responsibility to ensure that every member country can play cricket or whether it just wants to make money,” he added.
Afridi, the father-in-law of fast bowler Shaheen Shah Afridi, believes the biggest problem in Pakistan cricket is that policies change with every new chairman.
“When Shaheen was appointed captain of the Pakistan T20, I was against it and I said the board should have made Muhammad Rizwan captain because he was the best choice. But once they made Shaheen captain, it was wrong that the PCB removed him as captain after just one series, it affected him,” he said.
Afridi expressed confidence in young Saim Ayub's potential to excel in all formats but lamented that many talented players like him are not flourishing due to the poor grooming system in Pakistan cricket.
“We have a lot of talent in Pakistan but we are also losing so much of this talent because we don't have a system to identify such players and groom them properly,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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