The Indian High Commission has granted visas to the Pakistan team that will be travelling to India for the 2023 World Cup set to be played from October 5.
“Around 34 visas have been cleared, and we just got the intimation. One of our people has just left to collect the passports in Islamabad. It was a long process, and we should have gotten our visas earlier. The last-minute hustle is something that could have been avoided,” a PCB source told Sportstar.
The move comes after the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) wrote a letter to the International Cricket Council (ICC) expressing its concern over the visa issues.
“The breach of hosting rights was in danger, and we wrote a letter to the ICC expressing our concerns, and only then did the visas get cleared. Today evening at around 7:30 PM (Pakistan time) we got the final confirmation. We can now certainly say that the Pakistan team will be travelling to India,” the source said.
Pakistan will now take an early morning flight from Lahore and land in Hyderabad on September 27. The visa issue has disrupted Pakistan’s preparations for the World Cup, as the Babar Azam-led side will miss the earlier planned training session in Dubai.
The team was scheduled to hold a two-day training camp in Dubai ahead of its warm-up game in Hyderabad against New Zealand on September 29 at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium.
“We hope this doesn’t affect the players and the preparations, as there has been a lot of trouble. We are just happy now that the visas have been cleared. Looking forward for a successful World Cup,” the PCB source said.
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