Lot Of Work Needs To Be Done To Revitalise Pakistan-India Cricket, Says Ramiz Raja After Meeting With Sourav Ganguly, Jay Shah

Ramiz Raja, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chairman, has stated that plenty of work needs to be done to resume the bilateral ties between India and Pakistan.

He said this after he met BCCI president Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah at the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) meeting in Dubai earlier this month.

Ramiz Raja believes that politics should not affect sport and remained optimistic that the two nations will soon resume playing bilateral series. The two arch-rivals haven’t toured each other since Pakistan came to India in 2013 and now only clash in World Cups and Asia Cups.

 “I met with BCCI President Sourav Ganguly and secretary Jay Shah on the sidelines of the ACC meetings. We need to create a cricketing bond, while I have also believed that politics should stay away from sport as much as possible and this has always been our stance,” Ramiz Raja said in a release.

“A lot of work needs to be done to revitalise Pakistan-India cricket but there needs to be some comfortable level between the two boards and then we can see how far we can go. So overall, we had a good discussion,” he added.

Pakistan set to host the 2023 Asia Cup

The major decision which was taken at the ACC meeting, headed by Jay Shah, was that Pakistan will host the 2023 Asia Cup, Ramiz Raja confirmed to Cricbuzz.

It was also decided that the 2023 edition of the Asia Cup will be played in 50-over format – ahead of the 2023 World Cup, which will be played in India – while the 2022 edition, to be hosted by Sri Lanka, will be played in T20 format.

India are the current title holders of the Asia Cup, having won it in 2018, in UAE, under the captaincy of Rohit Sharma, when Virat Kohli was rested.

The last time Pakistan hosted a multi-nation tournament was the 2008 Asia Cup, in which Sri Lanka won by defeating India in the final in Karachi. International cricket was halted for more than 6 years in the country after the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team bus in 2009.

While slowly teams started touring to Pakistan and it seemed the PCB would host a full-fledged season this year before New Zealand, followed by England, pulled out due to security concerns. Ramiz Raja then lashed out at the cricket’s “western bloc”, enraging at those two tour cancellations.

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