Revival of Pakistan-India matches

KARACHI: Pakistan's senior cricket officials on Wednesday received 'positive signals' from their Indian counterparts over the idea of staging matches between the two old rivals on neutral soil in the near future.

Well-placed sources in the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) told 'The News' that a senior official from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCC) rang up a top PCB man on Wednesday to break the ice on the possibility of staging high-profile cricket matches between the two neighbours at some neutral venue in England, UAE or Malaysia.

"A BCCI official made contact with the PCB today and all I can tell you at this point in time is that there were positive signals from the other side of the border regarding the possibility of reviving Pakistan-India cricket matches," said the source.

Sources said that the development took place after a senior PCB official, told 'The News' earlier this week that the Board will make all out attempts to revive cricketing ties with India.

Wasim Bari told this correspondent soon after taking over as PCB's chief operating officer earlier this week that one of his top priorities is to pave the path for the holding of bilateral matches against India. "It's very important for our cricket to have regular matches against India," he had said in the interview.

"The ICC is willing to back such an initiative and we are certainly going to explore this opportunity in the near future," Bari stressed.

According to sources, Pakistan is willing to play a brief series involving one or two One-day Internationals or Twenty20 games in London, Dubai or Kuala Lumpur whenever there is a window available to fit in such a series during the busy future tour programme.

"If things fall in place, such games could be arranged on a very short notice and might even happen within the next few months," said the source.

India suspended its sporting ties with Pakistan following last November's terrorist attack in Mumbai that left 179 people dead. The incident left bilateral ties between Pakistan and India severely strained especially after the Indian government blamed elements across the border for the attacks.

India cancelled its full tour of Pakistan which was supposed to take place in Jan-Feb this year while in a tit-for-tat response Pakistan refused to send its hockey team to Chandigarh.

Pakistani cricket officials later said that the PCB suffered losses of over US$30 million because of India's decision to scrap the tour that was to include three Tests, five One-day Internationals and a Twenty20 game.

India also suffered losses of around $10 million because of the cancelled series.

While for the cash-rich BCCI, it wasn't a major financial blow its Pakistani counterpart is still trying to overcome a severe financial pinch that was caused by the cancellation of the home series against India.

In the past few months, senior PCB officials have tried to revive cricketing ties with India but only received a cold response from BCCI.

However, Sharad Pawar - a former BCCI President and now an influential player in the International Cricket Council (ICC) - has been supportive of the idea of reviving Pakistan-India matches.

Sources said that Pawar, ICC's vice-president, is trying to break the ice between PCB and BCCI and is being fully backed by the ICC.

The Dubai-based ICC wants to revive cricketing ties between Pakistan and India because the two countries share one of the greatest rivalries in world cricket.

A big proof of the fact that Pakistan-India matches generate greater interest than any other cricket games can be gauged from the fact that their Champions Trophy clash at Centurion (South Africa) on September 26 is already being anticipated as the match of the elite eight-nation tournament. According to reports, so high was the demand for the Group A game, that most tickets were bought in the first few days of the sale.

Even when Pakistan and India played in a practice game at The Oval last June just before the start of the ICC World Twenty20, they were greeted by a sell-out crowd. No other game in the tournament could match the intensity generated during that encounter.