The melee over the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 intensifies as both BCCI and PCB are stern with their stance. The Indian board has reiterated several times that the Indian team will not travel to Pakistan for cricketing purposes. Pakistan board on the other hand, who have the onus of hosting the upcoming multi-national tournament CT 2025, are also firm over not accepting any other option like the hybrid model. Thus, there is obscurity over the tournament and ICC may have to come up with a solution soon.

Former Pakistan Captain Zaheer Abbas Addresses Security Concerns Highlighted By BCCI

The BCCI isn’t convinced with the security measures that Pakistan will undertake during the tournament and since the star-studded Team India could emerge as high profile targets the board stands wary and does not want to take any risk. The concerns deepen as just a week ago a bomb blast took 25 lives in the city of Quetta.

Despite all the aspersions, the Pakistan Cricket Board is adamant over their ground. To delve further into the subject, Republic Media Network caught up with the legendary Pakistan batter, Zaheer Abbas. In the conversation, Abbas addressed the security concerns and tried to assuage the row by bringing the past into perspective. According to him, unrest has occurred before as well in many places, yet cricket never got hindered. So, why not look at the brighter side and play cricket as it should be.

Also Read | Records Galore As Sanju Samson and Tilak Varma Pummel South Africa

“Look, so many things happened all over the world while the cricket teams were there. It happens sometimes, if we have, we have a little bit of a problem in Quetta, it doesn’t mean that they don’t love cricket. They all love cricket. And I can tell you, I can call all the Quetta people to come and watch the Indian team because they all love it. Indian team is a very famous team in Pakistan. So, the Pakistan team is also very famous in India, so why not play? You just give me one reason why?”

“Security, 20 years back, 30 years back was not that problem, but the Indian team was not coming, this is unfair. It’s just now a few days back, the England team came and they played over here, they had no problem, everybody played here. I know India has some, special thing to, what can I say? But they all are more concerned about the security.