da betobet： West Indies manager Ricky Skerritt will make a surveillancevisit to Pakistan after his players expressed securityconcerns
21-Dec-2001West Indies manager Ricky Skerritt will make a surveillancevisit to Pakistan after his players expressed securityconcerns.”The board has advised that I should make a reconnaissancevisit to Pakistan to report on the security, as I did to SriLanka before the ongoing tour,” he was quoted as saying byThe Barbados Nation newspaper.The West Indies are scheduled to tour Pakistan between Jan25 and March 7. The PCB has already the itinerary claimingthat it has been sanctioned by the West Indies Cricket Board(WICB).”The players are very worried about undertaking such a tourwith the situation in Afghanistan still unsettled,” he said.However, Pakistan cricket officials said they were unawareof any such move though they admitted that they had invitedWest Indies officials to visit Pakistan a month ago.”We have no such information that Skerritt is coming toPakistan. But we had given West Indies officials invitationto visit Pakistan about a month back because they were inthe same area (in Sri Lanka),” a spokesman of the PCB saidThursday.However, the spokesman clarified that the visit should notbe linked up with security. “Any official is welcome toPakistan but we think security is no issue,” he said.Former West Indies captain Clive Lloyd is due in Islamabadnext month on a week-long coaching assignment. Besides, lastmonth Sri Lanka Under-19 played a five-match one-day serieswith Pakistan juniors.Skerritt also described scheduling the second Test atPeshawar “a strange decision”. Peshawar, the north-westerncity, is within a few miles of the Afghan border. But thePCB put their foot down when it said it doesn’t deal withplayers.”Peshawar was agreed as the Test venue by the West Indiescricket board when the itinerary was finalized. We don’tdeal with players. “If West Indies board would come to us,they will be given due consideration,” the PCB spokesmansaid.Skerritt said in light of the players’ concerns, “I havesuggested that a representative of the Players’ Associationjoin me so that the players can also hear from one of theirown and that has been accepted by the chief executiveofficer.”The time was getting short and a final decision would haveto be made on the tour shortly,” Skerritt said.The Pakistan cricket officials are, rightly so, pressing forthe series to be played in Pakistan dismissing all securityconcerns. They have also promised to provide as muchsecurity as any country would give. However, the ICC hasproposed that if the situation doesn’t turn normal, theseries can be played at neutral venues. United Arab Emirates(UAE) and Moroccan city of Tangier have been mentioned asthe likely venues.