Vin­ode Mam­chan

Yes­ter­day, the Fed­er­a­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­eters' As­so­ci­a­tions is­sued a re­port which strong­ly sug­gests that over­seas play­ers de­cline to par­tic­i­pate in the 2017 Pak­istan Su­per League Fi­nal due to con­cerns over play­er safe­ty.

In the re­port, FI­CA has warned that the risk lev­el in Pak­istan re­mains "at an ex­treme­ly el­e­vat­ed state" and that "an ac­cept­able lev­el of par­tic­i­pant se­cu­ri­ty and safe­ty can­not be ex­pect­ed or guar­an­teed."

Or­gan­is­ers have al­ready an­nounced that the fi­nal will be played in La­hore on March 7, as planned, whether over­seas play­ers take part or not. If they de­cline to trav­el, they will be re­placed by play­ers from Pak­istan. All ear­li­er games in the tour­na­ment will be played in the UAE.

But the FI­CA re­port would ap­pear to re­duce the chances of over­seas play­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing. While FI­CA does not have the pow­er to pre­vent play­ers trav­el­ling, its re­port, cir­cu­lat­ed to play­ers, their agents and play­er as­so­ci­a­tions around the world, might in­flu­ence some na­tion­al boards and do­mes­tic teams to de­cline to is­sue No Ob­jec­tion Cer­tifi­cates to their play­ers. FI­CA has al­so warned play­ers to "check their in­sur­ance cov­er­age" with the sug­ges­tion be­ing that it could be in­val­i­dat­ed by trav­el­ling to Pak­istan.

The re­port, which FI­CA says is based on "up­dat­ed se­cu­ri­ty ad­vice we have re­ceived" from its "ex­pert se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tants" states that: "Pak­istan con­tin­ues to ex­pe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant ter­ror­ist at­tacks across the coun­try and West­ern­ers have in the past been di­rect­ly tar­get­ed and killed in Pak­istan. In­dis­crim­i­nate and tar­get­ed at­tacks are like­ly to con­tin­ue, and ex­pert ad­vice is con­sis­tent with all Gov­ern­ment Agen­cies and Diplo­mat­ic Mis­sions, who gen­er­al­ly ad­vise to re­con­sid­er the need to trav­el."

It goes on to state: "There have been at­tacks at sport­ing events, which have had sig­nif­i­cant se­cu­ri­ty over­lay in the past, and ter­ror­ist groups in Pak­istan have demon­strat­ed the in­tent and ca­pa­bil­i­ty to launch at­tacks any­where in the coun­try. Lo­ca­tions in­clud­ing lux­u­ry ho­tels are al­so at high risk of be­ing tar­get­ed by mil­i­tant groups.

"The his­toric use of sui­cide bombers, the will­ing­ness of ter­ror­ist groups to at­tack armed po­lice and po­lice pro­tect­ed sport­ing events, the ca­pa­bil­i­ty of such groups and the in­tent, sug­gests that the risk as­so­ci­at­ed with the run­ning of an in­ter­na­tion­al sport­ing event are prob­lem­at­ic at present.

The West In­dies crick­et team has been in­vit­ed to Pak­istan to play a se­ries of T20 match­es in March and has al­ready an­nounced that they will be send­ing a team to Pak­istan to check on the se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion. In light of the FI­CA re­port Bas­sarath said: "This is a very sen­si­tive is­sue and we have a team go­ing across there to look at the sit­u­a­tion for us. Roland Hold­er our op­er­a­tions man­ag­er and Paul Slowe our head of se­cu­ri­ty will most like­ly be on that team and would re­port back to us. De­spite the con­cerns cit­ed by FI­CA, we will de­pend on what our team tells us. All is not lost in my per­son­al opin­ion be­cause once the PCB can guar­an­tee the se­cu­ri­ty of the play­ers and of­fi­cials, we may still have crick­et there."