PCB announces Doha as a venue for the upcoming Pakistan Super League

Newly-appointed worldwide Cricket Council (ICC) president Zaheer Abbas had said earlier this week that the PCB should show flexibility and must be willing to play the series in India in order to ensure the revival of cricketing ties.

“ICC requires us to put these boys under a program in which they address the players and lecture them on anti-corruption”, Shaharyar Khan, the PCB chairman, told.

Before the ban, Amir became the youngest player to take 50 wickets in Tests, claiming 51 scalps in 14 Tests at an average of 29.09, and he admits he is looking forward to putting the episode behind him.

Details of the Super League tournament have yet to be finalised, said Khan, but there will be at least five teams.

Sethi said that in the first edition of the PSL will have five teams from Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Quetta and Peshawar and will be sold as franchises. But dates for the tournament, in a tightly packed global calendar, clashed with the inaugural Masters Champions League, a Twenty20 league for former worldwide players.

The event should prove popular among Qatar’s huge Asian community.

The idea behind staging the league was to give Pakistani players a chance to compete with and against top foreign players, something which the national players do not get as global cricket has been suspended in the country since 2009.

In addition, there are large numbers of people from other strong Asian cricketing nations including more than half a million residents from India, 150,000 from Bangladesh and 100,000 from Sri Lanka.

The left-hander, who captained Pakistan at the height of a match-fixing controversy back in the 1990s and who was also among one of its whistle-blowers, also takes note of the board’s extraordinary support for Amir.

“I would only ask the PCB to make any decision on these players very carefully after giving it much thought”, Afridi said, while speaking to media representatives during a visit to the Jinnah hospital, according to the Press Trust of India.

If the negotiations secure the tournament in Qatar, it will reinforce the Gulf state’s position as a major sporting hub.

He added that bilateral cricketing series between Pakistan and Indian can only be played if the two sides agree to do so.