Alternative venues sought after tiff

Perturbed by the increasing differences with the ECB, Ijaz Butt confirms other venues are being sought for future.

KARACHI: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is seeking more neutral venues to play its home series following a war of words between the PCB and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and a series of allegations revelled against Pakistan.

Pakistan were forced to play its ‘home’ series against Australia in England.  However, perturbed by the string of allegations and the increasing differences with the ECB, the PCB Chairman Ijaz Butt confirmed other venues were being sought for the future.

“We’ve started looking at other options after the way our players were disgraced in England,” Ijaz told The Express Tribune. “The British media is biased against Pakistan and are intent on defaming our cricketers. We don’t feel comfortable in England anymore.

“It was very kind of the ECB to allow us to play the series against Australia but how the matters that followed were handled left us totally disappointed.”

Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir were suspended by the International Cricket Council (ICC) after the News of The World published reports claiming the trio was involved in spot-fixing. Within three weeks, The Sun alleged that Pakistan’s innings matched a certain scoring pattern that the newspaper had been informed of prior to the match.

The ECB cleared its players of any wrongdoing, a move that left the PCB fuming.“They should’ve shown support for Pakistan as well as there was no evidence found at that time. Our players were defamed and are suspended without any concrete evidence provided to us.”

The string of actions and accusations, according to the chairman, has forced the PCB to plan matches away from England. “We’ve started thinking about other venues as there are countries who’re interested in holding our series.” Pakistan will ‘host’ South Africa in the UAE in October and November while Malaysia have also shown interest in hosting Pakistan’s matches in the past.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 21^st, 2010.