Kolkata: The return of international cricket to Pakistan received a major boost few days back when Sri Lanka Cricket chief Thilanga Sumathipala had confirmed that Sri Lanka would tour the nation for a T20 series.
Now, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has hired an international security company for three years according to PCB chairman Najam Sethi. Reports suggest that the company would visit Pakistan either in the last week of August or the first week of September.
“It’s a step by the ICC for the revival of international cricket in Pakistan. The company is based in three countries – the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates – and has a good repute,” said Sethi as quoted by dawn.com
He further added, “A representative of the Federation of International Cricketers (FICA) will accompany the security company to personally monitor the security situation in Lahore.”
The security team would visit Pakistan each year and the ICC would pay them a whopping 400,000 US Dollars for every visit, Sethi confirmed.
“It will be a four-day visit where the security company will work with the government of Punjab to get assurances that all the recommendations submitted by security experts of the different countries who visited Lahore to watch the final of the second Pakistan Super League (PSL) season have been incorporated by the government in its SOPs, or not,” Sethi said.
Since the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team bus way back in 2009, international teams have stopped touring the country and Pakistan, for all this while has been made to play their home matches in the UAE. It was only in 2015 that an international team in the form of Zimbabwe toured Pakistan.
The Pakistan Super League final too was smoothly hosted in Lahore, and such steps taken by the ICC only makes it clear that cricket fans in Pakistan might not have to wait for long to see their cricketing heroes take on the other teams in the world.