Former captain Shahid Afridi has advised the PCB to refrain from sending the national team to India for any cricket event, including ICC tournaments, unless India agrees to send its team to Pakistan. Speaking at the Urdu conference at the Karachi Arts Council, Afridi emphasized the need for the Pakistan Cricket Board to adopt a firm stance on cricketing ties with India, asserting that Pakistan must become self-reliant to make strong decisions, particularly regarding participation in ICC events like the Champions Trophy.
"Pakistan cricket should be strong and self sufficient and take strong principled decisions. If India can't come and play in Pakistan then there is no reason for us to go and play any event in India,” he said.
The Champions Trophy is slated to take place in Pakistan between January and March next year. India has refused to play its Champions Trophy matches in Pakistan and instead demanded the tournament be played in a 'hybrid model', which would allow it to play its matches at a neutral venue.
According to a top International Cricket Council (ICC) source, the global governing body for the sport has reached a consensus to conduct the Champions Trophy in a hybrid model, allowing India to play its share of matches in Dubai while agreeing "in principle" to a similar arrangement in multi-lateral events till 2027.
Afridi said that the PCB had taken the correct stand on the Champions Trophy after India again decided against sending its team to Pakistan for the Champions Trophy, leading to a long delay in the announcement of the final schedule and venues.
“Even the ICC now has to decide whether its responsibility is to ensure every member nation gets to play cricket or it just wants to make money,” he added.
Afridi, who is the father-in-law of fast bowler Shaheen Shah Afridi, believes Pakistan cricket's biggest problem is that policies change with every new chairman. “When Shaheen was made Pakistan T20 captain I was against it and I said that the board should have made Muhammad Rizwan the captain as he was the best choice. But once they made Shaheen captain it was also wrong for the PCB to remove him as captain after just one series. It affected him,” he said.
Afridi expressed confidence in young Saim Ayub's potential to excel across all formats but lamented that many talented players like him fail to flourish due to the flawed grooming system in Pakistan cricket. “We have a lot of talent in Pakistan but we also lose so much of this talent because we don't have a system to identify such players and groom them properly,” he said.
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