SLC has just approved for the team to travel to Pakistan later this year. This will be the first cricketing nation to tour Pakistan after the 2009 attack.
The National Cricket team may tour Pakistan later this year for a single Twenty 20 game, Sri Lanka Cricket President Thilanga Sumathiapala announced at the 33rd Annual General Meeting of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) citing that security assessments ‘look positive.’
Speaking at the AGM, he said that Sri Lanka Cricket’s (SLC) security experts had visited Pakistan and noted that ‘things looked positive with things improving all over the country specially Lahore being cleared.”
“We have three Twenty20 games coming up against Pakistan in September and would like to play at least one of those games in Lahore,” he said. “I call upon each member to play your role and give Pakistan the security of your support. There is always risk – there were two attacks in London during the Champions trophy, but cricket continued under the security assurances of the ICC.”
This will be the team’s first visit to the country, eight years after the team was targeted in a deadly militant attack, which left many of the players injured and eight dead in the shootout.
Leading cricket nations have since shunned playing in Pakistan since the 2009 assault, in which gunmen ambushed the Sri Lankan team bus en route to the Lahore stadium.
