LAHORE: Pakistan’s cricketers may yet have a shot at their own Indian Premier League-style Twenty20 tournament — but it will take place overseas.
The Pakistan Cricket Board are still hoping to set up their version of a competition which has attracted so many of the world’s top players to neighbouring India. PCB’s domestic cricket chief Sultan Rana claims original plans were in place but had to be set aside after the terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka team bus in Lahore in 2009.
“We first considered the idea a couple of years ago,” he told PakPassion.net “The documents were complete, and we were all set to go. But the attack on the Sri Lankan team meant that we had to shelve all of our plans at that time.”
There is a precedent for holding a tournament on foreign soil, after the IPL had to move to South Africa because of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
Rana added:
“I recently went to Sri Lanka during the World Cup and spoke to the cricket board representatives of many other countries.
“But apart from Sri Lanka, they are reluctant to send their players to Pakistan - so that presents a problem for us. We simply cannot host the tournament in Pakistan if we want to attract the top players.
“What we are trying to do is to organise a competition in Dubai. This idea was discussed in the past and has very much been in our plans and is still on the table.
“I’m sure we can organise this tournament, which will run along the lines of the Indian Premier League.”
