Exuding confidence that the ICC Champions Trophy will be held in Pakistan, the country’s cricket board chief Mohsin Naqvi said all teams, including India, will take part in it. India haven’t sent their team to Pakistan since July 2008 due to political tensions between the two countries.
“The Indian team should come. I don’t see them cancel or postpone coming here and we are confident we will host all the teams in the Champions Trophy in Pakistan,” he said.
The ICC Champions Trophy is scheduled to start February 19, with the final set for March 9, and Lahore, Karachi, and Rawalpindi earmarked as the venues.
Naqvi also stated that the preparations are on schedule, and the stadiums would definitely be in a much better shape to host the ICC tournament.
“The stadiums will also be ready to host the matches on schedule and any remaining work would be completed after the tournament. In a way, you can say that we are going to have a brand new stadium,” he said.
BCCI vice-president Rajiv Shukla had recently said that the final call about India visiting Pakistan for the Champions Trophy will be taken by the Indian government.
The ICC Champions Trophy will be the first major event that Pakistan has been assigned to host in almost a decade. The country had last co-hosted the 1996 ODI World Cup with India and Sri Lanka. It was supposed to co-host the 2011 edition of the tournament, but its rights were stripped after a terrorist attack on a touring Sri Lankan team’s bus in 2009.
The tournament was then played in India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh.
While the Indian team hasn’t travelled to Pakistan ever since the 2008 Asia Cup, Pakistan has visited India on three occasions: for a white-ball series from late December 2012 to January 2013, the 2016 ICC T20 World Cup, and the 2023 ODI World Cup, which was entirely hosted by India.
In the 2023 World Cup, Pakistan played two matches each in Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Kolkata, while the high-voltage match against arch-rivals India was played at Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium on October 14.