Pakistan have threatened to pull out of the Asia Cup

Image courtesy of: Zimbio

BCCI acting secretary Amitabh Chaudhary has said that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) have to decide whether they want to send the national team to India for the Asia Cup tournament in September.

PCB chairman Najam Sethi took exception to the BCCI’s objection to Pakistan hosting the 2018 Emerging Teams Asia Cup.

As a result, in December last year, Sethi said Pakistan may opt to withdraw from the Asia Cup.

“I also raised the point that since the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is still awaiting an approval from the government to hold the Asia Cup and wants the visa clearance of all the participating teams, the PCB will decide whether to go to India or not because we are also bound by our government’s clearance,” Sethi had told Dawn.

Despite the PCB’s threat to pull out of the competition, Chaudhary made it clear the the Asia Cup is a part of the Future Tours Programme (FTP) and will go ahead whether Pakistan play or not.

“Asia Cup is a part of the FTP,” he was quoted as saying by ANI. “Irrespective of the names of the teams, the tournament has already factored in. There is nothing about it.

“That is a question that Pakistan has to decide. In 2016, in the World T20 in India, Pakistan participated.”

Relations between the BCCI and PCB have been frosty for some time, but things really took a turn for the worse when the BCCI refused to honour a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) they signed with the PCB in 2014.

The MoU stated that the two nations would play six bilateral series between 2015 and 2023. However, with none of the series having been honoured thus far, the PCB had demanded compensation, but the BCCI refused to pay their Pakistani counterparts.

In May last year, the PCB ramped up the heat on the BCCI as they sent a notice of dispute to the board for failing to adhere to the MoU.