Sri Lanka Agrees to Fill in after India Cancelled Pakistan Cricket Tour

Seetha Vijayan - TNS

Chennai: Sri Lanka officially announced it will fill the cricket tour to Pakistan for the cancelled tour by the Indian cricket team which was scheduled to play three Tests and five one-day internationals and one Twenty20 from January to February 2009 in Pakistan.

Earlier, The Australian cricket team had pulled out of a tour and the Champions Trophy one-day tournament citing security for its players.

Following the official Pakistan cricket tour cancellation announcement by India, Pakistan Cricket Board CEO Saleem Altaf officially sent out the invitation to Sri Lanka on Thursday to play the test series in place of India.

"Sri Lanka have agreed to tour Pakistan," PCB chief operating officer Saleem Altaf confirmed.

"We are working on the dates and other details. Sri Lanka will travel to Pakistan straight from Bangladesh where their tour ends in the third week of January."

"We thank Sri Lankan Cricket for confirming a tour in place of India," Altaf told AFP.

"We have sent a full itinerary to Sri Lanka and as soon as it is finalised we will announce it," he added.

Pakistan Cricket Board CEO Saleem Altaf said, the amount of money we will be getting from the Sri Lankan series in place of India will have no comparison to Indian series if they would have played with us.

"The amount of money we would have generated from the television rights from hosting the series against India has no comparison what we will be getting from the Sri Lankan series," Altaf said.

The Indian authority believes that, November 26^th terror attacks in Mumbai in which heavily armed Islamist Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba militants apparently entered the Mumbai city via sea and mounted a series of coordinated attacks at a landmark of Indian freedom including Mumbai hotels, hospitals, a Jewish Center, a restaurant, a rail station and many other places came from Pakistan. Since the terror attack in Mumbai the financial hub of India, relationship between India and Pakistan at its low ebbs. This recent development seems affecting the India-Pakistan cricket too.