Pakistan will be hosting Sri Lanka for two limited-overs series at home starting this week. However, 10 Lankan veteran players also pulled out of the series citing security reasons. However, even if other teams start touring Pakistan for full-fledged series, there are still doubts that if the Indian team will ever be visiting Pakistan for a series in future.
Chief of the Committee of Administrators (CoA) Vinod Rai has said that the Indian government is willing to playing with Pakistan but only at neutral venues. The BCCI has cited the Indian government’s orders to repeatedly refuse to send the team to Pakistan on a bilateral series. India went to Pakistan in 2004 under the captaincy of Sourav Ganguly and their latest visit to the neighboring country took place in 2005-06 when Rahul Dravid was leading the team.
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The relationship between the two nations had gone from bad to worse earlier this year in the wake of a suicide attack on a convoy of paramilitary forces in Jammu and Kashmir that the Indian team even threatened to boycott Pakistan at the ICC World Cup in England. However, the match eventually took place and India won the rain-curtailed match to maintain their clean record against the arch-rivals at the showpiece event.
Talking about the same, Rai said, “On playing Pakistan, I think there is a government policy…that you can play on neutral territory, and not on each other’s… We are very clear in our minds that on neutral territory we will play any country.”
He further added, “If we don’t play Pakistan (in the World Cup), we lose one point, two points, and that doesn’t matter. But suppose Pakistan comes up in the semi-final and we withdraw. Isn’t that shooting yourself in the foot?”
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Rai said instead of shooting in the foot, the right step was to isolate Pakistan. He meant the letter written by the BCCI to the ICC urging the Test-playing nations to sever ties with countries that see terrorism emanating from their soil.
