The 2023 Asia Cup venue dispute between BCCI and PCB appears to be largely settled, but meanwhile the rhetoric also continues. Pakistan is going to host the Asian Cup but still the Indian team will not play any match in Pakistan. The matches of the Indian team will be arranged somewhere else. In such a situation, former Pakistani cricketer Imran Nazir has said that the Indian team does not come to Pakistan for fear of defeat, not for security.
On Nadir Ali’s podcast, Imran Nazir said: ‘The reason why the Indian team is not coming to Pakistan is not security at all. You see how many teams have visited Pakistan in the past. A team like Australia has also come here. So citing security is just a pretext. The truth is that the Indian team does not want to come to Pakistan because they are afraid of defeat here.
The Indian team last toured Pakistan in the year 2006. Then Team India had lost the Test series but had won the ODI series. After this, after the attack on 11/26 in Mumbai, the Indian team stopped touring Pakistan. However, after this, the Pakistani team definitely toured India twice. The last bilateral series was played between India and Pakistan in 2012/13. Since then, in the last decade, these two teams have met only in the Asian Cup, the Champions Trophy or the World Cup.
Imran Nazir says: ‘People want to watch the India-Pakistan game because their level of emotion is different. Everyone knows this. As a cricketer, we also believe that Indo-Pak matches should keep happening to bring cricket everywhere. We have also been playing matches against each other in the past. Both teams are very balanced, but the Indians cannot tolerate defeat. This is a game, you will win something and you will lose something too.