Pakistan Only Team Yet To Get Visas For ODI World Cup 2023 In India: Report
Mumbai: Pakistan is the only one of nine teams traveling to India for ODI World Cup 2023 still awaiting visas, ESPNcricinfo reported. Pakistan has reportedly been forced to cancel its plans to hold a two-day camp in Dubai before flying to India due to visa issues. Pakistan reportedly applied for visas over a week ago.
Although one official said the situation was “alarming”, there does appear to be general confidence that the visas will arrive in time for Pakistan to travel. The application for visas is understood to have been made over a week ago.
According to ESPNcricinfo, among the nine teams flying to India for the World Cup, Pakistan is the only one who has not yet received their visas. The delay does draw attention to the convoluted and volatile political environment in which the team is visiting India. Because getting visas is a laborious and frequently unproductive process, travel between the two nations is very limited for citizens of both sides.
It is now uncommon to cross the border for cricket. Since Pakistan’s journey to India for a white-ball series in 2012–13, no side has visited the other nation for a bilateral series. As relations between the two nations have steadily, if occasionally abruptly, deteriorated since the Mumbai bombings in November 2008, the trip itself was an anomaly. Pakistan has toured India once in the last ten years, but that was for the T20 World Cup in March 2016.’
Horse dealing concerning the most recent Asia Cup has already been brought up in relation to their participation in this ODI World Cup. Although Pakistan served as the event’s official host nation, only four of the matches were played there because India’s team was denied permission to visit Pakistan. As a result, Sri Lanka hosted the majority of the tournament using a hybrid format developed by the then-PCB chief Najam Sethi.
The PCB proposed a similar hybrid format for the World Cup at one point in earlier this year’s negotiations, in which Pakistan would play its games outside of India, maybe in Bangladesh. This notion, which also raised the possibility of India visiting Pakistan for the Champions Trophy in February 2025, was never taken seriously, and in August, the Pakistani authorities approved the team’s trip to India.
The tournament’s schedule was also changed in response to demands from the police departments of several cities, particularly Ahmedabad and Kolkata, as a result of match dates coinciding with significant religious holidays. Nine matches in total were rearranged as a result.
Next Friday’s warm-up match between Pakistan and New Zealand will be played behind closed doors in Hyderabad due to insufficient security assurances from the authorities. Around the time of that game, there are two significant religious celebrations in the city.
Only two members of Pakistan’s current team had previously visited India for a cricket match: Mohammad Nawaz, who was a member of the team that represented Pakistan at the 2016 T20 World Cup, and Agha Salman, who was a member of the Lahore Lions team that competed in the Champions League T20.
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