PCB puts legal proceedings on hold against ICC

Karachi:

Pakistan Cricket Board has put on hold its legal proceedings against the International Cricket Council for shifting 2011 World Cup matches from the country., hoping of a positive outcome from next week's meeting of the event's co-hosts in Dubai.

"The ICC had also indicated that we hold our legal proceedings until this meeting and we are also confident of some positive outcome from it," Tafazzul Rizvi, the legal advisor of the Board said on Wednesday.

He said if things didn't move forward on the issues raised by Pakistan it always had the option of continuing with its legal options against the ICC decision to shift the 2011 World Cup matches because of the security situation in the country.

Pakistan has filed a legal challenge to the ICC decision claiming the Executive Board was not authorised to shift the World Cup matches from a host country.

The ICC has said that while it has shifted the matches because of security reason, Pakistan still remains a host partner of the World Cup.

Another senior PCB official said Pakistan was confident of good results from the Dubai meeting since the Executive Board decision to shift the matches had yet to be ratified at the annual council meeting in June in London.

"The decision can be reversed and we will be given back our share of the World Cup matches," the official said.

The Dubai meeting would be attended by the heads of the Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh Boards, the ICC President, Chief Executive and Sharad Pawar who will take over as the next ICC President.

The official said Pakistan would submit several options at the meeting in a bid to get back its matches one of which was to hold them at neutral venues if the security situation in Pakistan didn't improve in the next few months.

PCB Chairman Ejaz Butt has been busy holding talks with officials of the other World Cup host countries in recent days in an effort to drum up support for Pakistan's proposal to hold their matches at neutral venues.