Monitoring Desk

LONDON, June 28: The Pakistan Cricket Board won’t receive compensation for the $25 million it’s lost from cancelled tours in the past 18 months, International Cricket Council Chief Executive Malcolm Speed said Friday.

At an ICC Executive Board meeting Thursday, the PCB asked for money after New Zealand, Sri Lanka and West Indies refused to tour Pakistan after the Sept 11 terrorist attacks.

India didn’t tour in January 2001 for political reasons, which alone cost the PCB about $15 million in missed revenue.

“We don’t believe compensation is appropriate,” Speed was quoted as saying by Bloomberg News.

“For Pakistan to be compensated all the other boards have to pay. There may be another way of dealing with it by way of a loan against World Cup revenues to solve any cash flow problem Pakistan may have.”

The board asked Speed, a former barrister, to study the process that would enable a loan to be made from the money generated by next year’s World Cup.

“It won’t be terribly difficult,” he said.

He plans to produce a report well in advance of the next ICC executive board meeting in October.

The PCB, frustrated that it toured countries when they had problems with militants, hoped for a grant that would partly reimburse its losses.

“There is a good deal of sympathy for the PCB and there is a recognition that they have lost many millions of dollars,” said Speed, a former chief executive of the Australian Cricket Board.

That may not appease the Pakistanis.

PCB Director Brig Rana told Bloomberg News that they needed more than words of sympathy.

“It wasn’t the outcome I’d hoped for,” Rana said after the meeting.

The Asian Cricket Council may debate the issue at its meeting on Sunday. At an ACC forum in March, five of the 10 Test-playing nations backed India in a spat with the ICC over the composition of a referees’ commission. The ICC eventually backed down.

The ICC, this time, may avoid a split with its members as many of the Asian countries on the Executive Board have already shown they aren’t prepared to part with funds to help Pakistan.