Calm before the storm as ICC, PCB and BCCI play waiting game

It's all quiet on the ICC-Pakistan-India front - potentially the proverbial calm before the storm. Three days since the Government of Pakistan announced a boycott of the February 15 India game at the Twenty20 World Cup, not much has progressed, with the parties - the International Cricket Council (ICC), the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and even the host Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) - seemingly adopting a wait-and-watch policy.

The belief is that the boycott may not necessarily be the last word on the matter, although it remains a possibility given that the decision has come from the Government of Pakistan. With Pakistan, however, nothing can be taken for granted until the last hour, as seen during the Asia Cup last year.

But an act of truancy is unlikely to be viewed lightly by the ICC Board and its members. Serious retribution would almost certainly follow, though that would be post facto.There have been some murmurs that interlocutors from both sides are engaged in some kind of back-channel confabulations, but there is no confirmation of that.

Meanwhile, there have been claims in the Pakistan media that Jay Shah, the ICC chair, has flown to Mumbai along with CEO Sanjog Gupta to hold discussions with Mukesh Ambani, the owner of JioStar, the official broadcaster of the World Cup in India, to discuss the repercussions of Pakistan's declared pullout. However, the facts, as the picture above shows, are something else.

Shah and Gupta have been in Milan for the last few days on International Olympic Committee (IOC)-Winter Olympics related work and in the process they took time out to meet with a few Associate European nations like Svenska Cricketforbundet (SCF, Sweden), Deutscher Cricket Bund (DCB, Germany) and Jersey Cricket Board (JCB, Jersey) among others.

During the meeting, Shah encouraged the European federations to continue their hard work and emphasized the importance of long-term development within the ICC framework. He acknowledged the progress being made across Europe and highlighted the strong potential of emerging associate members.

"The hard work of the European cricket federations is appreciated. The potential of cricket in Europe is significant, and emerging associate members have the opportunity to progress further through continued effort, performance and development, in line with ICC's processes, regulations and established pathways," Tariq Zuwak, chairman of Swedish Cricket, told this website after the meeting.

Zuwak added that the ICC leadership underlined the importance of structured growth and sustainable development, with a clear pathway for associate members to advance within the global cricket ecosystem. Zuwak also revealed that the ICC CEO Sanjoq Gupta assured them that nascent markets needed innovative approaches for growth including experimentation with new formats and structures.