Ehsan Mani lauds New Zealand

Ehsan Mani, the president of the ICC, has lauded New Zealand for undertaking their tour of Pakistan. The team will leave on Wednesday for a revised 12-day tour with five one-day internationals.

"They would not be sending a team if they were not reasonably comfortable, but if someone is uncomfortable about going, it would be wrong to make them," said Mani. "There was a threat made, and New Zealand did the right thing by stepping back and assessing it."

New Zealand were due to play their first match late last week but delayed the tour's start to assess security measures.

Visiting New Zealand with Malcolm Speed, the ICC chief executive, Mani spoke of the new protocol for teams contesting tour programmes. "There was great co-operation between the boards, and the ICC was kept informed. New Zealand has laid the issues out openly and transparently and explained the situation," he said.

New Zealand's foreign affairs ministry had advised tourists to avoid visiting Pakistan, but Speed said that this did not apply to international teams. He said: "Teams have a significantly higher level of security and it's quite a different issue. It's very hard to look at straightforward advice given to tourists where you can apply that to cricket teams and generally we don't do that."