Venues wouldn’t change during Pakistan's India tour despite Pakistani concerns

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has promised to arrange special flights to cart the players around if the schedule is tight during the visit by Pakistan later this year, but maintained the venues of the matches would be decided by its own rotation system. “We have played in small centres in Pakistan without hesitation. If necessary we will arrange for special flights but we will go by our rotation system in deciding the venues for the matches,” BCCI secretary Niranjan Shah told an Indian website on Wednesday.

Shah was reacting to reports that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) was expecting its team to play a majority of its matches at big venues. The tour is slated from early November, but sources said the PCB had already requested the BCCI not to schedule matches at venues that require a lot of travelling as was the case during the 2005 tour. The Pakistani players and officials had complained of fatigue due to extensive travelling on their last tour which the Indian Board defended as a necessary evil as it had to rotate international matches among its affiliated units.

A PCB official said more deliberations on the make up of the itinerary was likely to be held on the sidelines of the joint 2011 World Cup committee meeting next month in the summer resort of Bhurban. “When the Indians are here obviously we will have discussions with them on the proposed venues and dates for the tour and perhaps even on the number of one-dayers to be included in the memorandum of understanding for the tour,” he said.