Cricketing nations' prior commitments marring ICC's CT prospects in Pak

From ANI

Karachi, Sept 12: The ICC is not being able to take a decision about rescheduling the Champions Trophy, as several countries, including India, have prior commitments for the next year and they can't change it for the eight nation tournament which a couple of months was postponed for next year, said a PCB official attending the ongoing two-day ICC meeting in Dubai.

"The future tours programme was discussed in detail on the first day of the meeting and besides India, other countries have also said they can't change their prior commitments for the 2009 event," said PCB's Chief Operating Officer, Shafqat Naghmi.

"But, Pakistan is pushing for the tournament to be held in October because as it is the ICC has an agreement with its broadcasters that it can't postpone the tournament for more than 13 months," the Dawn quoted him as saying.

The Champions Trophy was to be held from Sept 12 in Pakistan, but the ICC postponed it after some countries refused to send their teams to Pakistan because of "security reasons".

The ICC chief executives' committee is due to finalise new dates for the tournament, but India has said that it can't change the schedule for its seven-match one-day series against Australia from mid-October. And, South Africa are also planning to have the Champions League Twenty20 event in September and October 2009 as well.

Naghmi said things were a bit complicated at the moment as a series involving South Africa was also scheduled in October next year. "The BCCI did not say that India is not in favour of playing the Champions Trophy in October but they did raise the point about their commitments. But, we have no differences with the BCCI over the clash of dates and we are hopeful something will be worked out," he added.

Earlier, on Wednesday, former ICC president Ehsan Mani had advised the PCB to surrender the hosting rights of the Champions Trophy to avoid financial losses. But the PCB reacted sharply to Mani's advice, even as PCB spokesman Mansoor Suhail said. "It's his point of view but as far as we are concerned, we are not going to the surrender the hosting rights of Champions Trophy."

The CT was put back to October 2009, but India's cricket board the BCCI expressed reservations over those proposed dates, saying it had planned a seven-match One-day International series against Australia at that time. "These (dates) are all procedural issues which could be resolved with mutual understanding," Suhail said.


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