Pakistan’s Interior Ministry has cleared the national men’s and women’s teams to travel to India for the World T20. The decision came after the government received letters from the West Bengal state government and Kolkata’s police commissioner Rajeev Kumar, assuring special security measures for Pakistan’s men’s team while in Kolkata, where their match against India will be played on March 19. The teams are expected to arrive in India on Saturday.*
Najam Sethi, the chairman of the PCB’s executive committee, met Pakistan’s interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Khan on Friday and later informed the media that the government had received “solid assurances” from India’s Ministry of Home Affairs.
“We have got the assurances we had wanted from India [the federal home ministry and the West Bengal government] about the security around the Pakistan teams and the good news for the fans is that Chaudhry Nisar has said the teams can travel to India,” Sethi said. “Chaudhry Nisar said that the government has received solid assurances from the Indian home ministry so we can send our teams to India. The team will be leaving either tonight or tomorrow morning.”
Cricket Association of Bengal president Sourav Ganguly had submitted the letters from Kumar and West Bengal’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee to the ICC on Thursday afternoon. According to two senior CAB officials, the content in both letters, which were addressed to CAB, was brief: both Banerjee and Kumar stated they will take responsibility for the Pakistan team’s security for the duration of their stay in Kolkata for the match against India.