The Board of Control for Cricket in India had decided in the second week of January to send a three-member team to Pakistan to have a look at the grounds, facilities for the players, and security arrangements. Ratnakar Shetty, joint secretary of the Board, Yashowardhan Azad, senior IPS officer in the Ministry of Home Affairs, and I were selected to be part of the team.
There is nothing unsual about this. It has become standard practice. All Boards nowadays send teams to look at the arrangements and other matters relating to a tour before sending in their players. The BCCI decided to send a security expert as part of the team to look at the security angle because there were some apprehensions about it. Secondly, we did not know much about Pakistani grounds because it has been a long time since the Indian side last visited Pakistan.
Originally we were supposed to travel to Pakistan in the first week of February, but the Pakistan Cricket Board requested that we postpone the visit by a week because of the Eid holidays.
We landed in Lahore on February 9 to a tremendous reception and left for Islamabad the same evening. We had a series of meetings with government officials in the Pakistani capital on February 10. In the afternoon we visited the stadium in Rawalpindi.
Next morning we left for Peshawar by road. We reached there after three and a half hours. After looking at the facilities and ground, we came back to Pindi and stayed there for the night.
We took a flight to Karachi on February 12 and spent the whole day there inspecting the ground and other facilities and holding meetings with security officials.
At some places the officials gave us a demonstration of the kind of security the Indian players would get during their stay in Pakistan. At other venues, the whole thing was explained on a board. Generally it was Yashowardhan who interacted with the security officials. We as laymen knew nothing about the intricacies of security.
On the 13th we went to Multan and from there to Faisalabad. From Faisalabad we travelled to Lahore on the 14th morning and spent two days there meeting PCB officials and security officials.
We were in touch with BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya throughout our tour and told him about the developments. At no stage did we get any instructions from the Government of India concerning security matters. If any came directly to Yashowardhan Azad, I do not know.
We were aware of media reports in India that the tour may be called off for security reasons. The Pakistani media were also concerned about this. Fortunately the whole thing was cleared by Prime Minister Vajpayee and the government announced that the tour would go on.
The BCCI is now awaiting Yashowardhan's report from the Ministry of Home Affairs. We will decide the tour dates after Dalmiya returns from his trip to London. We are committed to go through with the full tour of three Tests and five one-day matches. But the tour can be curtailed and league and smaller matches left out if it has to be finished in a certain slot.
Amrit Mathur, the BCCI's director, media relations, spoke to Onkar Singh.
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