The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) On Wednesday sent a Notice of Dispute to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for breaching the 2014 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two cricketing bodies, in which six bilateral series were scheduled to take place between 2015 and 2022.
PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan said legal measures were being sought as Pakistan was suffering lost revenues.
“We have initiated the legal process by sending BCCI a Notice of Dispute under the Dispute Resolution Committee Terms of reference of the International Cricket Council,” Khan told AFP.
“PCB has claimed the losses and damage suffered by it, which comes to around $60 million, as a result of BCCI's breaches of the agreement.”
Last month, Najam Sethi, Chairman of the Executive Committee at PCB had tweeted his decision to take legal action against BCCI.
Of the six bilateral series initially agreed upon in the MoU signed in 2014, revenue from four series was supposed to go to Pakistan and two series were meant to generate money for India.
Explore: PCB mulls legal options against BCCI for dishonouring MoU regarding bilateral series
Najam Sethi, while talking to the press in December last year, said: “PCB has suffered a loss of $200 million because India refused to play the promised series against Pakistan.”
With Pakistan-India ties consistently at a low, it is unlikely that the arch-rivals will be playing a series against each other in the near future.
The Notice of Dispute is the latest in a series of events that characterise the PCB-BCCI tussle.
When India first refused to participate in a cricket series with Pakistan, PCB's top executives, including Najam Sethi and Shaharyar Khan, paid a visit to Mumbai in October 2015 on invitation of BCCI president Shashank Manohar and secretary Anurag Thakur.
The meeting got cancelled as Shiv Sena 'hooligans' stormed the BCCI headquarter,disrupting any chances of the two boards meeting to discuss the possibility of reviving bilateral series, which at that point had been at a halt for eight years.
The PCB, after repeated failed efforts to revive cricketing ties with India decided to take legal action, and today has filed its notice to the BCCI.
The International Cricket Council's Dispute Resolution Committee will be the arbitrator in the latest legal fixture between India and Pakistan.
Bangladesh, too, refused to come to Pakistan to play cricket over "security concerns", earlier this year.
Earlier in March, PCB chairman Shaharyar Khan said they may ask Bangladesh for compensation for not touring Pakistan before agreeing to visit them for a series in July-August this year. Speaking to journalists, he said: "We already toured Bangladesh in 2015 and they did not turn up in Pakistan in return [on security grounds]. We may ask them to compensate us financially if they want us to tour them again in July-August this year.”
