PCB, WICB sign five-year bilateral contract for T20I series

Chairman Sethi reveals West Indies will visit Pakistan in March next year

Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chairman Najam Sethi on Saturday revealed that they have signed a five-year contract with the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) to play a bilateral T20I series.

Sethi, while addressing media at Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium, said that speculation about West Indies’ refusal to play in Pakistan need to stop.

“There is an important announcement; I didn’t want to delay it any further,” said Sethi. “All of you are interested in the West Indies’ tour, so I want to clarify the situation."

“Pakistan and West Indies cricket boards have signed an agreement to play a series of T20 matches each year, for the next five years, in Pakistan and in the US, subject to the availability of dates and venues,” he added.

Dates and venues

West Indies were supposed to tour the country in November for a three-match T20I series as announced earlier by the PCB chairman, but due to inclement smog condition in Lahore, their visit was deferred to March next year.

“WICB has confirmed that the full national team will visit Pakistan in 2018 and participate in three T20I matches on March 29, 31 and April 1, respectively,” said Sethi. “There were talks that the series should be played in November, but the weather conditions were not good, so we didn’t take any risk.”

The 69-year-old added then revealed the details of the series. “Now we will start everything from March next year. The first series will be in Pakistan, and then we will go to America to play the [reciprocal] series,” he said. “The series in America will be a tri-nation affair which will include Pakistan, West Indies and a third country.”

When asked why did they choose the US and not West Indies for the reciprocal tour, Sethi said: “It was their wish. They think holding a series in the US is financially more feasible. And if you look at it, a three-nation tournament will attract a lot of interest.”

The clarification from the PCB chairman came after speculations about West Indies started surfacing, which claimed that the players are not “happy with security”, are “unavailable” and are “demanding extra money”, but Sethi shot all of the rumours down.

“I wanted to reveal this so that it would become clear that the visits to Pakistan by international teams are not one-time affairs, and the five-year contract with West Indies explains our position,” he said.

He added that after Sri Lanka’s visit last month, a lot other countries have also shown interest in visiting Pakistan.

“Many countries have contacted us for, but we are reluctant to talk to any of them at the moment because our calendar is quite packed at the moment,” he said.