“The interesting thing is that no representative of the main stakeholder, the Pakistan Cricket Board is on the committee,” Khalid Mahmood said in an interview.

Khalid Mahmood accepted that it is not justified that Team India do not come to Pakistan for Asia Cup 2023, but forming a high-level committee to make a decision is not the way things are done. “While I agree that there is no justification for India not to tour Pakistan now but this is not the way things are done at the international level,” he said.

“If you say that we are looking at the security situation before deciding to send a team to India, that makes sense, but to say openly that if India doesn’t come to Pakistan then we will also not send a team to India for World Cup, is mixing both things, which we have never done,” Khalid Mahmood added.

Despite threats from India

Khalid Mahmood shared experiences from his tenure as the chairman of PCB and said they used to assess the security situation in India and advise the Pakistan government accordingly. “When I was chairman in 1999, despite threats from India, we assessed the security situation for our team ourselves, by sending a delegation to India and advised the government we were willing to go to India.,” he said.

“I expect Zaka Ashraf to face an uncomfortable situation, when he attends the ICC meetings later this week, because of the formation of this committee and the statement made by Minister, Ahsan Mazari,” Khalid Mahmood added.

(With PTI inputs)

Updated: 10 Jul 2023, 05:10 PM IST