Indo-Pak v World XI Peace Cup match unlikely

Prospects of a joint India-Pakistan team taking on a World X1 in a `Peace Cup' suffered a setback with the English Cricket Board (ECB) refusing to host the match. News International, a Pakistani newspaper, quoted the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief executive Rameez Raja as saying: "The ECB was approached for permission to stage the Peace Cup match but they refused permission, (and) as such the question of the Pakistan or Indian boards giving their consent for the project never arose."

The one-day match was conceived by Percept D'Mark, an Indian event management company in which Sourav Ganguly is involved. It was to have been played on August 15, India's Independence Day. But the chances of the match materialising appeared remote with anonymous sources in the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) immediately expressing their opposition to the idea.

According to the news report, the ECB also backed off saying it had a busy international and domestic schedule of matches at home. Raja too had apparently objected to the game being organised by an entity other than the BCCI.

The combined India-Pakistan XI was to have had Sourav Ganguly, Yuvraj Singh, Virender Sehwag, Mohammad Kaif, Zaheer Khan, and Javagal Srinath playing alongside Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Shahid Afridi and Moin Khan. The World XI, led by Ricky Pointing, was to have included Brian Lara.

Interestingly, profits from the match were to have benefited the widows of the 1999 Kargil war between India and Pakistan, the conflict that deeply ruptured cricketing and political relations between the two countries.