Vin­ode Mam­chan

The Pak­istan and the West In­dies crick­et boards have reached an agree­ment to play a T20 in­ter­na­tion­al se­ries in the Unit­ed States in Ju­ly this year.How­ev­er, that is just one part of the sto­ry, the oth­er is ob­tain­ing visas for the Pak­istani crick­eters to land in the US for the match.Sources close to the West In­dies Crick­et Board (WICB) in­di­cat­ed to the T&T Guardian that both the WICB and the Pak­istan Crick­et Board (PCB) have fi­nalised the sched­ule and agreed that two match­es (T20 for­mat) should be played at the Broward Coun­ty ground in Fort Laud­erdale in Ju­ly.

The game's ruler, the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC), has al­ready been no­ti­fied by the re­spec­tive boards. Pak­istan team will tour West In­dies from Ju­ly 7 to play five ODI match­es and, af­ter that, both teams are sup­posed to fly to Mi­a­mi for the two T20 match­es.Ac­cord­ing to the source, al­though the WICB would be play­ing the match­es in Fort Laud­erdale, the match­es would still be treat­ed as home match­es.In the re­cent past, West In­dies, New Zealand and Sri Lan­ka have played T20 match­es at the same venue in Fort Laud­erdale with the out­come not very en­cour­ag­ing be­cause of com­plaints over the pitch con­di­tions.

The WICB is one of the crick­et boards that the ICC has charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of de­vel­op­ing crick­et in the Amer­i­c­as and the think­ing, ac­cord­ing to the source, was that: "Pak­istan is in­volved in the se­ries the West In­dies board is con­fi­dent the match­es can be a huge suc­cess and al­so pro­mote North Amer­i­ca as a in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et cen­tre."There is a big Pak­istani and West In­di­an ex­pa­tri­ate com­mu­ni­ty in Mi­a­mi and oth­er parts of Flori­da and they are ex­pect­ed to show keen in­ter­est in these two match­es."The source, how­ev­er, ad­mit­ted that one of the biggest hur­dles in the way of the two match­es be­ing held in Fort Laud­erdale was get­ting visas for the Pak­istani play­ers.

The Pak­istan team will re­turn home af­ter the Cham­pi­ons Tro­phy and then leave for the West In­dies on Ju­ly 7. The Pak­istan board has al­ready start­ed ini­tial prepa­ra­tions for ap­ply­ing for the US visas which nor­mal­ly take a long time to be processed, from that part of the world.The source fur­ther point­ed out that af­ter the 9/11 in­ci­dent the US em­bassies took time to process visa ap­pli­ca­tions from Pak­istani na­tion­als.A West In­dies Crick­et Board di­rec­tor agreed with the com­ments made by the source and said that at this mo­ment it was very un­sure as to whether the match­es will go ahead as planned in Fort Laud­erdale.He said lob­by­ing was ex­pect­ed to be done by both boards and the ICC would al­so be asked for as­sis­tance.