Pak players to avoid IPL in future, outrage continues

Hurt Pakistani cricketers have decided to avoid the Indian Premier League till Indo-Pak ties are normalised.

The snub at the auction for the third season of the IPL continued to evoke angry reactions from the sports fraternity in Pakistan with some former players calling for a boycott of the hockey World Cup in India.

The players, who did not find any buyer in the auction on Tuesday, held a meeting in Brisbane. The team is in Australia for an ODI series. The players decided that it was best to ignore the event, at least for the time being.

"The players unanimously decided to avoid playing in the IPL in future and until at least relations between the two countries normalised," one source said.

"The players were pretty upset that no franchise was willing to bid for them and they all felt this was a planned move by the IPL and franchises to humiliate them publicly," the source said.

The outrage over Pakistani players being ignored at the auction threatened to snowball into a major diplomatic row and there were reports that angry cricket fans burnt effigies of IPL commissioner Lalit Modi in Lahore.

Some former players made a scathing attack on the IPL organisers and the franchisees for humiliating the Pakiistani players. Former Test captain Zaheer Abbas suggested that the national hockey team be withdrawn from the World Cup in India to protest against the "humiliating" treatment meted out to the country's cricketers.

Abbas said he would talk to sports minister Ejaz Jakhrani on the matter. The World Cup is due to begin in the last week of February in Delhi with Pakistan facing India in the opening match of a tournament that they have not won since 1994.

"We need to make some sort of strong statement conveying our feelings over the way the IPL organisers and franchises deliberately insulted our cricketers at the auction," Abbas said.

The former Test batsman said Pakistan must be clear about its sports policy with India and act accordingly. "We must be clear about how we should have sporting relations with India because for the last one year they have been doing everything possible to hurt our image and isolate us internationally," he said.

Jakhrani, however, made it clear that Pakistan will not withdraw from the hockey World Cup despite the outrage in the country. He said it would not be possible for Pakistan to boycott the World Cup as it was an International Hockey Federation event and not related to India.

"I would tell the players to go there and play their hearts out and try to win the World Cup for Pakistan," the minister said. "It would
be a befitting answer to the Indians that we don't mix politics with sports."

But Jakhrani said he would be discussing sporting ties with India during a meeting with Pakistan Cricket Board and Pakistan Olympic Association officials in Lahore tomorrow.

Jakhrani called on the Indian government to at least look into the reasons for the franchises deciding not to buy any of the 11 Pakistani players at the auction.

"I think if the Indian government says it can't interfere in IPL affairs as it is a private organisation, then it should at least find out why our players were humiliated in this fashion," he said.

Jamshed Dasti, chairman of the National Assembly's standing committee on sports, blamed the PCB leadership for the humiliation the players had had to face.

"This is not the first time the board and chairman Ejaz Butt have failed miserably to handle things properly and read the situation correctly," he said.

"That is why the NA standing committee has urged the chief patron to immediately change the chairman of the board and make other changes in the cricket set-up," he said.