BCCI says Pakistan cleared to tour India

Oct 30, 2012 |

New Delhi

Tags:

Shahid Afridi with his team-mates_0.jpg.crop_display.jpg

India's cricket board said Tuesday it has secured government clearance to host Pakistan for a short tour later this year.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India has invited Pakistan to play three one-dayers and two Twenty20 matches in December-January, the first bilateral contests between the arch-rivals in five years.

"We have discussed all security aspects (and) the tour is on," board spokesman Rajiv Shukla told reporters after a meeting between its officials and Indian Home Secretary R. K. Singh in New Delhi.

A report by the Press Trust of India said the venues for the ODI games would most likely be Chennai, Kolkata and New Delhi while the Twenty20 matches would take place in Bangalore and Ahmedabad.

The rivals have not played a series since Pakistan's tour of India in 2007, after cricket ties were snapped following the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai by militants from Pakistan.

Cricket ties have been the subject of discussions between the governments of both nuclear-armed countries. They have been holding regular meetings in a bid to improve relations and eventually thrash out a peace agreement.

The countries -- where cricket is hugely popular -- have fought three wars since independence in 1947.

The Indian and Pakistani cricket teams have only met in international tournaments since 2007.

They clashed in the ODI World Cup semi-final in the northern Indian town of Mohali last year, a match that was attended by both countries' prime ministers.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/199050" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-2dd93853def5f1c6cf858fdf094d1485" value="form-2dd93853def5f1c6cf858fdf094d1485" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80896804" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>