No Player From Pakistan In Asia XI, Confirms PCB Chief Ehsan Mani

Players from Pakistan will not feature together in the combined Asia XI team that will take on World XI in the two official T20 matches in Bangladesh, Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief Ehsan Mani confirmed. Bangladesh will host two T20Is to celebrate the 100th birthday of their Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

The two matches will be played on March 18 and 21, 2020 in Mirpur. Both the games will have international status. And while Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) has confirmed that it has requested all the Asian countries to send their players for the series, Pakistan are unlikely to do so.

Ehsan Mani has confirmed that the players won’t be able to play the games as the dates are clashing with the Pakistan Super League (PSL) schedule. He was also critical of the way the news was blown out of proportion with distorted facts.

“The Asia XI match is during the PSL. We did explore with BCB the possibility of the match date being changed but BCB were not able to do this for understandable reasons,” Mani told Sportstar.

“Unfortunately the media hypes as ever are a distortion of the facts,” he added.

Five players from India to play for Asia XI:

Unlike Pakistan, India’s players will be in Bangladesh for the series. BCCI joint secretary Jayesh George recently confirmed that as many as five players will play for Asia XI. He, however, said that the final decision on which players will travel to Bangladesh depends on BCCI president Sourav Ganguly.

“Our board has decided to send five players. It has been left to the BCCI president (Sourav Ganguly) to decide which five players would go to Bangladesh,” he told bdcrictime.

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