‘No standby to hold India-Pak WT20 tie’
NEW DELHI: The Indian cricket Board is confident of resolving uncertainty over hosting the India-Pakistan World T20 tie in Dharamsala on March 19, BCCI secretary, Anurag Thakur, said.
However, the Board has not put together any Plan B in case the hilly Himachal Pradesh venue is ruled out as the venue for the tie. Himachal chief minister, Virbhadra Singh, has written to the union home ministry that providing security would be an issue as the body of ex-servicemen and families of slain army officials were opposed to hosting Pakistan, especially in the wake of the Pathankot attacks.
“We’ll try to solve this issue. We all respect martyrs. But we hosted Pakistan in Dharamsala for a match in 2005, so we should not give any different shape to this,” Thakur said at a media event to announce the signing of Pepsi as a BCCI sponsor. “There is nothing like that (standby venue). It is not that easy to makes changes at this stage,” he said. The WT20 starts on March 8 with India’s first match scheduled on March 15.
Thakur said Virbhadra Singh, who heads a Congress government was not opposed to the match and has promised to talk to the ex-servicemen’s body. He had met the CM on Wednesday. “It’s a very prestigious tournament. We are not hosting it with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Pakistan. We are hosting it alone and the onus is on us. We all condemn the Pathankot attacks, stand by our martyrs. But can’t bring politics into sports,” he added. The Himachal government has said it has no issues staging the other matches at the venue. Pepsi had last year quit as IPL’s title sponsor citing cricket’s negative image. It will be one of three associate sponsors BCCI is roping in and expects to earn a revenue of around R150 crore over four years.