Karachi, Oct 24 (Inditop.com) The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) is confident that the game’s governing body will never approve a proposed two-tier Test system that is said to be pushed by cricket’s ‘top-four’ nations — Australia, India, England and South Africa.
Reacting to reports that the proposed structure has the ‘provisional backing’ of the International Cricket Council (ICC), PCB’s chief operating official Wasim Bari said that such a move will never materialise.
“There is no truth in such reports,” The News quoted Bari Saturday. “The issue was never even discussed at the ICC meetings in South Africa which is why I’m sure that such a thing is not taking place,” he stressed referring to the crucial ICC meetings that took place Oct 6-7 at Johannesburg on the sidelines of the Champions Trophy.
“The Futures Tour Programme (staring from 2012) will have an equal number of matches and series for all of us, including Pakistan because the ICC has its principles and will ensure a fair deal for all of its members,” added Bari, a former Pakistan Test wicketkeeper.
The paper feared that Pakistan, which is already in neck-deep crisis, could suffer yet another blow as there are indications that the country could be bracketed on the wrong side of a proposed two-tier Test structure in the near future.
“Though the country’s cricket chiefs remain confident that such a structure will never be allowed to be formed, signals coming from various parts of the cricket world strongly suggest that the so-called “big four” – Australia, India, South Africa and England – continue to gun for a two-tier system in which they will be the ones occupying the
top slab,” said the report.
“It is an open secret that cricket boards from those four nations have joined hands and want to divide the Test structure into two, effectively relegating teams like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and the West Indies to the lower category,” it added.
However, Bari rejected such reports as mere speculations, saying that the world of cricket will never allow such a division to take place.
“Nobody will allow them to do such a thing,” remarked Bari, adding that he was sure a team like Pakistan cannot be relegated in the Test structure.