Cricket Australia CEO confirms Pakistan players to play full BBL season amid concerns of them going to Sri Lanka.
Pakistan imports to play entire BBL, says Cricket Australia CEO.
In addition to sending a group to Pakistan to complete plans for Australia’s T20I tour there before the T20 World Cup, Cricket Australia (CA) has received guarantees that the Pakistani players in the BBL will play the entire competition despite a planned T20I tour of Sri Lanka in January. Additionally, Mackay and Darwin will host Test matches against Bangladesh during Australia’s winter; the dates will be revealed in January, according to CA chief executive Todd Greenberg.
Babar Azam, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Mohammad Rizwan, Shadab Khan, Haris Rauf, and Hasan Ali were among the Pakistani players participating in the BBL. There had been worries that they would be pulled to play in a short T20I series in Sri Lanka in early January, which the PCB recently revealed.
On the morning of the third Ashes Test at Adelaide Oval, however, Greenberg spoke extensively with a group of reporters and expressed his confidence that the players will stay in the BBL.
“We’ve been told that if they’ve been signed by the BBL, they’ll play [the whole BBL],” Greenberg said.
Although the dates of Australia’s Twenty20 International visit of Pakistan prior to the Twenty20 World Cup have not yet been revealed, Greenberg stated that the tour is proceeding, with representatives from the Australian Cricketers’ Association and CA travelling to the nation for a pre-tour security check.
“We’ve just sent a couple of people to Pakistan to do a pre-tour for the T20I games in February,” he said. “We’re going to have some conversations with the players after the [Ashes] series and explain to them how that will work with security. But I went there with them in 2022 and it was an amazing experience.”