Image via Telegraph.co.uk
Top Test playing nations are willing to tour Pakistan for full-fledged series, fervent appeals by the Pakistan Cricket Board that the security situation in Pakistan has, if anything, further deteriorated, notwithstanding. The England Cricket Board was the first to offer to “play Pakistan anytime, anywhere for a 5 Test series”. “Pakistan is now a haven of peace and tranquility, and there are no two opinions about it,” observed the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) chairman, Giles Clark. “The boys are looking forward to some exciting cricket in that part of the world and enjoying the famed hospitality of the Pakistani people.”
Clark credited specialists at the Australian National Cricket Centre in Brisbane for making Pakistan safe for the return of international cricket. “Thanks to them, the boys no longer feel terrorized about playing against Pakistan. So what if a crank whizzes out his Kalashnikov and rains bullets on the team’s bus? We have seen all the Terminator movies. These things don’t scare us. It’s those lethal doosras that gives the boys nightmares but now that is a thing of the past,” the ECB chairman said with a twinkle in his eye.
Within minutes of the ECB offer, the BCCI chief shot off this letter to his PCB counterpart, Shahryar Khan, offering to tour Pakistan immediately for 6 Tests, 12 ODIS, and 5 T-20s:
Dear Shahryar,
Subject: WE ARE COMING!!!
BCCI convened an emergency meeting yesterday during which there was 100% unanimity that Indian team must tour Pakistan asap. And let’s not bother with silly venues in the middle of nowhere like Abu Dhabi. The boys want to play in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Sialkot, even N Waziristan, if you chaps have managed to build a stadium there. The bullets and bombs will only add to the festive ambiance with our cricketing director’s famed “that went like a tracer bullet” being true in more ways than one.
So let’s do this boss.
Yours
Sunny Shivlal Yadav N Srinivasan
Supreme Court
PS: Sorry to hear about Ajmal getting banned. Perhaps he can learn how to bowl the carom from our Ashwin and get back into the team. :P :P
The new found enthusiasm by top Test playing nations to tour Pakistan has left its cricket board in a quandary. “Other countries may now find it safe to play against Pakistan but Pakistan doesn’t find it safe anymore to play against other countries! Our boys have huge security concerns of their own,” a very glum PCB chief Shahryar Khan told The UnReal Times.
The PCB is frantically trying to get in touch with N Srinivasan to rescue Pakistan cricket from its biggest crisis ever. “We have even promised to lend Ajmal to CSK for the entire IPL season if he can er..bend the ICC rules a bit,” Shahryar said.