Pakistan’s plans for a pre-World Cup staff bonding journey to Dubai have been cancelled because the staff was on Friday nonetheless awaiting visas to journey to India. The Pakistan squad have been resulting from fly to the UAE early subsequent week and keep for a few days earlier than flying to Hyderabad, forward of their first warm-up sport in opposition to New Zealand on September twenty ninth.
As a substitute, these plans have been shelved and Pakistan now plan to fly out of Lahore to Dubai early subsequent Wednesday and fly to Hyderabad from there. Though one official stated the state of affairs was “alarming”, there does look like common confidence that the visas will arrive in time for Pakistan to journey. The appliance for visas is known to have been revamped per week in the past.
As of now, ESPNcricinfo understands, they’re the one one of many 9 sides touring into India for the World Cup nonetheless awaiting visas. The delay does spotlight the complicated and tense political backdrop in opposition to which the staff is touring to India. Journey between the 2 nations for residents on both aspect is extraordinarily restricted as a result of acquiring visas is an arduous and infrequently fruitless course of.
Crossing the border for cricket has additionally grow to be a rarity. Neither staff has visited the opposite nation for a bilateral collection since Pakistan’s journey to India for a white-ball collection in 2012-13. That journey itself was an outlier, amid a gradual, usually sharp, deterioration within the relationship between the 2 nations for the reason that Mumbai assaults in November 2008. Pakistan has toured India as soon as within the final ten years, however that was for the T20 World Cup in March 2016.
Their participation on this World Cup has already been the topic of horse-trading involving this month’s Asia Cup. Pakistan have been the official hosts of that occasion however solely hosted 4 matches, with India’s staff not given clearance to journey to Pakistan. In consequence, nearly all of the match was performed in Sri Lanka in a hybrid mannequin conceived by then PCB chief Najam Sethi. At one stage in negotiations earlier this 12 months, the PCB floated the concept of an analogous hybrid mannequin for the World Cup whereby Pakistan would play their video games outdoors of India, perhaps in Bangladesh.
That concept, which additionally raised the query of whether or not India would journey to Pakistan for the Champions Trophy in February 2025, was by no means a severe proposition and in August the Pakistan authorities gave clearance to the staff to journey to India.
Just one participant from Pakistan’s present squad has travelled to India for cricket earlier than – Mohammad Nawaz, who was a part of Pakistan’s 2016 T20 World Cup squad.
