India vs Pakistan: While the cricket governing bodies of India and Pakistan have prohibited their teams from traveling across international borders for Asia Cup 2023 and ICC ODI World Cup 2023, the situation is different for other sports. With PCB and BCCI making their stance clear, sports like Hockey, Football, and Bridge continue to flourish among the two bitter rivals.
Pakistan will visit Bengaluru for the South Asian Football Federation (SAFF) Championship next month, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) confirmed on Wednesday. This is because the two countries were placed in the same group.
While, the Pakistani hockey team had just announced that they intended to attend the Asian Champions Trophy in Chennai in August, assuming they could raise the necessary funds.
And to top it all, the Indian bridge team had recently visited Lahore that too at the height of the most recent political unrest in Pakistan, where the players claimed they were “treated like royalty.”
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India vs Pakistan Cricket: What is Actual Problem?
The foremost factor is that Cricket is not an Olympic sport and is not governed by IOC regulations. A significant impasse in this saga has resulted from the International Cricket Council (ICC) failure to intervene in the continuing dispute between the cricket boards of Pakistan and India.
The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has stated that it will not travel to India for the ODI World Cup 2023, which starts in October, while the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has remained staunch in its position that it will not send a team to Pakistan for the Asia Cup 2023 in September.
IND vs PAK in other sports
BJP member from West Bengal and AIFF president Kalyan Chaubey stated about Pakistan’s presence in SAFF Championship 2023: “They (Pakistan) were included in the lottery (draw) only because we got confirmation on their participation.”
The Pakistan Hockey Federation said last week that its secretary general Haider Hussain had sent a letter to the nation’s Sports Board asking for a NOC to visit India. Hussain then stated in a video message that Pakistan would definitely go to Chennai.
The FIFA and International Olympic Committee rules, which bar a country from discriminating against athletes from any country, are binding, according to officials from the football and hockey federations.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) even revoked India’s hosting privileges for international competitions four years ago after the Indian Government refused to issue visas to Pakistani shooters who were scheduled to compete in a World Cup in New Delhi.
It is unknown if the Pakistani football and hockey teams would be able to obtain visas in time for the competitions despite their commitment to visiting India.
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