The ongoing drama of ICC Champions Trophy 2025 keeps getting new twists every other day as the latest allegations suggest that the PCB’s threat to withdraw from the tournament over the Indian players wanting a neutral venue to play would put them at risk of financial loss from the ICC.
From the moment that the ICC announced that Pakistan would host the next ICC Champions Trophy in 2025, speculation has been rife regarding whether India would take part in the grand tournament or not considering India and Pakistan’s history of strife and conflict.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) appears to be caught between a rock and a hard place as India has already declined to play the next Champions Trophy in Pakistan. On Sunday, the ICC sent a letter to the host board which informed it about India’s inability to send its team to Pakistan for the tournament of eight nations.
The PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi has already said that Pakistan will not play a hybrid model for the Champions Trophy. However, more recently it has been reported that Pakistani authorities are planning on withdrawing the national cricket team from the tournament.
Cricbuzz suggests that there is a possibility of the hosting nation imposing a fine on the PCB costing them about $65 million and a decrease in the amount of money they receive from ICC, which is quite significant.
The BCCI apprising the ICC of its inability to send a team to Pakistan, in effect, left the PCB with no alternative, but to implement the ‘Hybrid Model’ of conducting the Champions Trophy. If they do choose to go the hybrid route – PTI states – the ICC will ensure that the PCB is paid “full hosting fees” and allowed to host “most of the matches”.
Nonetheless, Mohsin Naqvi, the chairperson of the board, emphasized during a press briefing that the board has not gotten any correspondence from the BCCI.
“First and foremost, let me make it very clear that if they have any reservations, they have to communicate them through a formal letter to us. So far, we have not discussed any hybrid model but are willing to discuss it,” PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi stated to the reporters in Lahore some time back.
“If this is what the Indian press is claiming, then there should be either a letter induced by the ICC for us to receive or one that the Indian Board has drafted. As of now, such a letter has not come to me or PCB,” he noted.
Since the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008, India has not sent its team to Pakistan. The two sides play against each other just in the ICC events.
