Pak want more matches vs SA at Abu Dhabi

Pakistan’s team management today sent an enquiry to CSA through a third party about playing the series in the United Arab Emirates latest international venue.

South Africa are similarly placed for two reasons. They controversially abandoned their triangular plans in Sri Lanka a week ago because of security threats in the island’s capital. Anyway, the tournament was cancelled last Sunday after a week of incessant south west monsoon rains left the two venues where the games were to have been played seriously waterlogged.

While administrators in South Africa, Pakistan and England try to unravel this touchy issue of who should be playing who where as the ICC tournament looms, the coaches of the three countries involved attempt to sort out a pre-tournament preparedness road map.

South Africa’s Mickey Arthur admitted in an email that “I am desperate to get a few more games than have already been promised the team. The pull-out of the series in Sri Lanka was disastrous to our plans to build a back up player profile.

“Sure the rain wrecked the tournament, but there are several players who we wanted to see in action. This is why whatever extra games we can get would help us. If Abu Dhabi is on then that would be great. It would give us a chance to see what fringe players can achieve.”

South Africa have two games against Zimbabwe and hope to expand this to three. But as the Pakistan enquiry suggested, a tournament in Abu Dhabi would give both sides a chance to experiment. The plan is to go ahead with the tournament with or without a third team, said to be Australia.