Islamabad
Sri Lankan cricket team arrived in Pakistan on Monday for their two-match Test series. Pakistan will play its first international Test match on home soil in more than a decade when it takes on Sri Lanka on Wednesday in Rawalpindi.
The first match in Rawalpindi will be played from December 11-15, while the port city of Karachi will host the second match from December 19-23.
Pakistan has not hosted the longer format of the sport – played over five days – since the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team bus in Lahore .
Sri Lanka had agreed to play the Test series after the successful staging of one-day and Twenty20 internationals in September and October this year.
This tour is being considered most important for the cricket loving nation as it would surely highlight Pakistan’s reputation of being as safe and secure as any other country in the world.
The international cricket returned to Pakistan in 2015 when Zimbabwe toured the country for one-day and Twenty20 matches.Pakistan has hosted a number of limited-overs internationals in recent years, with Sri Lanka playing three ODIs and three T20 matches in September and October, though 10 key players opted out of that trip citing security concerns.
Miandad said the cricket lovers deserve to see the long-awaited games at home. “Sportsmen are ambassadors of their countries and sports must not be involved with politics,” he said.
Miandad, who represented Pakistan in Tests and ODIs between 1975 and 1996, also commended the efforts of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) for bringing back the longer format game to Pakistan.
Both sides would contest two Tests as part of the World Test Championship, with the first to be played at Cricket Stadium in Rawalpindi from December 11 and second to begin at National Stadium in Karachi on December 19. —Agencies
