Thaindian News

Islamabad, April 12(ANI): The Pakistan Cricket Board has been pushing the idea of a Pakistani tournament on the lines of the Indian Premier League, PCB’s domestic cricket department chief Sultan Rana has said.

Rana stated that the setting up of the Pakistani Premier League had been in their plans for the past couple of years.

“We first considered the idea a couple of years ago. The documents were complete and we were all set to go, but the attack on the Sri Lankan team meant that we had to shelve all of our plans at that time,” PakPassion.net quoted the PCB official, as saying.

Although the plans, which were prepared two years ago, were subsequently put aside, Rana remained hopeful that the plans would be implemented soon. However, the tournament would most likely be organised outside Pakistan due to safety concerns.

“I recently went to Sri Lanka during the World Cup and spoke to the Cricket Board representatives of many other countries, but apart from Sri Lanka they are reluctant to send their players to Pakistan, so that presents a problem for us. We simply cannot host the tournament in Pakistan if we want to attract the top players,” said Rana.

Since the option of hosting the PPL in Pakistan is an unlikely eventuality as of now, the PCB is mulling over hosting the competition in Dubai.

“What we are trying to do is to organise a competition in Dubai. This idea was discussed in the past and has very much been in our plans and is still on the table,” Rana said.

“I’m sure we (PCB) can organise this tournament, which will run along the lines of the Indian Premier League,” he added. (ANI)