September 25 2008
Pakistan has signed a contract valuing $9 million; according to this agreement Pakistan will play its One Day International and Twenty20 matches in Dubai for the period of three years. This news was told by the PCB’s representative on Thursday.
The deal is made with Dubai sports city.
This agreement is the result of the failed efforts by Pakistani authorities, who tried to convince teams to visit Pakistan after a number of bombings in previous some months.
Pakistan searched out and made new opponents after the delay by Australia to visit Pakistan for a scheduled Test tour and secondly as we all know what happened to ICC Champions Trophy.
The reason was same for both and that was security concerns.
Shafqat Naghmi told the details about this agreement to Rueters. He is a chief operating officer of the Pakistan Cricket Board.
He said that through this we will get an option to play international cricket.
It would also be additionally benefit us by aiding us financially.
He told that this contract also includes a tri-series scheduled in 2009 in Dubai. It will be played in the cricket stadium of Dubai sports city just after its completion.
The news came from reliable sources that for each tournament PCB will get $1.5 million.
Also each player will be paid $100,000 appearance fee for playing any match series in emirates.
In 2002, Pakistan brought West Indies and Australia at different locations. That was a time when many teams refused to visit South Asian country in the consequence of the incident of the September 11th suicide attacks on the United States.
The West Indies team will come to Pakistan just after the ending of the One Day match series which would be continued from Nov. 12-16 in Dubai. They will play two test matches.
On the other hand, Naghmi also told that the West Indian players had also showed their security fears about visiting Pakistan.
