Serial blasts put doubts over Pak’s Champions Trophy hopes

Karachi, July 7 : The ICC Champions Trophy, scheduled to be held in Pakistan in September this year, is in grave danger of being moved out to an alternate venue even though the Asia Cup, seen as a warm-up to run the rule on the security measures, went off quite smoothly.

In the last two days, Pakistan has experienced blasts in Islamabad and Peshawar, apart from serial blasts in Karachi, which should put the already apprehensive boards such as Cricket Australia, New Zealand Cricket and the England Cricket Board further on the backfoot.

The three countries had expressed fears over touring Pakistan for the ICC tournament, citing security concerns, but had recently agreed to go by the renewed security preparations that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) assured would be made available to them before and during the tournament. In fact, these boards had hired an Australia-based private security firm to check on the measures, who in turn sent a representative, Reg Dickson, to Karachi to assess the situation.

However, four days after Dickson left, Karachi was witness to serial blasts in various parts of the city, following which these Cricket boards are likely to reconsider the situation strongly once again. While PCB chairman Dr Naseem Ashraf remained unavailable for comment, PCB officials who didn’t want to be named said that “something like this was totally unexpected,” further adding how the Pakistan board will now find it “very difficult” to explain the situation to other board members.

Reacting to the blasts, the ICC released a strong statement saying that they would not compromise on the safety and security of any individual at one of its tournaments. “If it is not appropriate to play in any country then we will not do so,” the governing body’s CEO Haroon Lorgat said.

“Our security consultants have been working with the Pakistan authorities during the Asia Cup, assessing security, and will report back as soon as possible with their views,” he added.

In the recent ICC chief executive committee meeting in Dubai, the members discussed security concerns in great detail and had almost given a go-ahead to the tournament though the decision had not been ratified fully by all the playing nations.

But now, after this round of violence, it is unlikely that these nations will do so. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had recently said that they supported PCB’s right to host the tournament but no comment has been made after news of blasts began to spread.

The Indian cricket team left Karachi on Monday morning while the Sri Lankans were scheduled to leave in the evening, just after the blasts occurred.

Ads By Google

Message*	Maximum characters allowed

Name*		Email ID*
Subject*		Country*

TERMS OF USE:
The views, opinions and comments posted are your, and are not endorsed by this website. You shall be solely responsible for the comment posted here. The website reserves the right to delete, reject, or otherwise remove any views, opinions and comments posted or part thereof. You shall ensure that the comment is not inflammatory, abusive, derogatory, defamatory &/or obscene, or contain pornographic matter and/or does not constitute hate mail, or violate privacy of any person (s) or breach confidentiality or otherwise is illegal, immoral or contrary to public policy. Nor should it contain anything infringing copyright &/or intellectual property rights of any person(s).

I agree to the terms of use.