Serial blasts put doubts over Pak’s Champions Trophy hopes

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.

“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...