With India tour of Pakistan early next year looking bleak, the Cricket Board in Karachi has started arranging some other international commitments for its national team in case the Indian board fails to get a clearance from its government."Yes we are looking at other options and have started exploring other avenues. Because we can't allow our team to remain without international cricket," said Saleem Altaf, the chief operating officer of the Board.Without elaborating the details of these other options, Altaf said his visit to Capetown for the ICC chief executives meeting had been very fruitful in this regard."It was a good platform to explore and discuss things with other Board officials. Let us see how things go," he said.Chances of India touring Pakistan have virtually diminished after the Mumbai terror attacks and even former Indian captain, Sunil Gavaskar has said that it would be impossible for India to play in Pakistan in existing conditions. Pakistan is now hoping that the Indians would at least agree to play the series at neutral venues. Pakistan went without a Test match in 2008 which saw them playing just 21 one-day internationals including 13 against weak teams like Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Hong Kong.Altaf said Pakistan cricket was passing through a difficult phase and it needed to have a new strategy to tackle the problem of lack of international cricket opportunities for the national team.Pakistan board has even looked at possibility of getting their forthcoming series insured against cancellation, postponement and terror attacks to avoid a financial crunch. Altaf said an insurance specialist from the United Kingdom had given a detailed briefing on insuring coming series but the board was treading carefully."We want the entire process to be transparent and we had our chief financial officer, an independent auditor and our legal advisor sit with the insurance expert but we have made no final decision as yet," he said.
