Karachi, July 3:
Former Pakistan skipper Javed Miandad has rubbished the plans of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) to hold its inaugural premier league T20 tournament early next year in Dubai.
“Unless the premier league is held in Pakistan it will serve no purpose and it will not help bring back international cricket or foreign players to Pakistan,” Miandad said on Friday.
His comments came a day after the chairman of the board, Najam Sethi had said that if Pakistan was to get back international cricket the board had to start the premier league T20 event even if required at a neutral venue.
Sethi said that due to security situation in Pakistan the inaugural premier league would be held in Dubai before the World Cup in a bid to attract foreign players.
But Miandad a veteran of 124 tests and until recently a top official in the PCB disagreed.
“It should be launched in Pakistan even on a small scale because we have to be patient but sooner or later it will attract a lot of foreign players even i Pakistan,” he added.
Miandad who resigned from the board during Sethi’s tenure few months back said he didn’t agree with the plan to have it in Dubai.
“It will serve no purpose because foreign players will no longer have any compulsion to come to Pakistan once it is held abroad,” he noted.
He said the PCB needed to do more and be convinced itself that it was possible to stage international matches in Pakistan.
“When we have our own league in Dubai the message we are sending outside is we ourselves are not convinced so how can we convince foreign players,” he said.
Sethi told reporters on Thursday that millions of rupees had been spent on setting up the league secretariat in Lahore but for no reason the scheme was put aside by former chairman, Zaka Ashraf causing losses to the board. (PTI)
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