LAHORE: Former International Cricket Council (ICC) president Ihsan Mani has called on incumbent Jay Shah to play a role in defusing tensions after Pakistan decided to boycott its match against arch-rivals India, scheduled to be held in Colombo on Feb 15.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Dawn from London, Mani \u2014 who has also served as the head of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) \u2014 said that being the current ICC chief, Jay Shah should not only speak to Mohsin Naqvi to defuse tensions, but also save world cricket from potential financial losses.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe should go to Pakistan to convince the government to end the boycott and also listen to their grievances,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Asked about media that the ICC had appointed Deputy Chairman Imran Khawaja to negotiate with the PCB, Mani said that Khawaja represented associate member Singapore, and was not the right man to deal with the matter. \u201cIt is better for the ICC chairman to deal with the government of Pakistan on his own.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was of the opinion that if the government of Pakistan had taken such a bold step, it must have some solid grounds, in case the matter is moved before the ICC\u2019s Arbitration Comm\u00adittee in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere may be some weakness in Pakistan\u2019s case, because the ICC shifted Pakistan\u2019s matches from India to Sri Lanka (under the hybrid model), but a competent legal team can argue it effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is possible, he opined, that India \u2014 holding much sway over the ICC \u2014 may get a decision in its favour from the arbitration committee, like what happened in 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the ICC again fails to deliver justice to Pakistan, [and chooses to] please India, we have the right to take it to the World Court of Arbitration in Switzerland. There, Pakistan will have every chance to win the case because there are many incidents, which are enough to prove politics is involved in the ICC\u2019s affairs,\u201d Mani said.<\/p>\n
When asked about the potential financial losses due if the India-Pakistan match doesn\u2019t go ahead, Mani said that while the match yields massive revenues for the ICC, Pakistan only gets 5.75 per cent against India\u2019s hefty share 38.5pc from the income of the game\u2019s governing body.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the time for Pakistan to fight for an end to politics in the ICC. [They] did not take any action against India when they [spoilt] the gentleman\u2019s game by refusing to shake hands with the Pakistan team [at the Asia Cup]. The ICC did not take any action when the Indian team refused to accept the Asia Cup trophy from ACC Chairman Mohsin Naqvi, just because he is a Pakistani.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe boycott of India-Pakistan match may be a violation of members\u2019 participating agreement (signed between PCB and the ICC), but the negative attitude of the BCCI is to blame, which forced Pakistan to take such a big decision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LAHORE: Former International Cricket Council (ICC) president Ihsan Mani has called on incumbent Jay Shah to play a role in defusing tensions after Pakistan decided to boycott its match against arch-rivals India, scheduled to be held in Colombo on Feb 15. Speaking to Dawn from London, Mani \u2014 who has also served as the head […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15760,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15758\/revisions\/15760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}