Pakistan captain Agha Salman said it is \u201cunfortunate\u201d that Bangladesh will not feature at the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, telling reporters at the captains\u2019 media day in Colombo that Pakistan \u201cvalues the support of Bangladeshis\u201d and would have preferred them in the tournament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Addressing Pakistan\u2019s boycott of the group-stage match against India, Salman stressed the decision lies with the state: \u201cThe India match isn\u2019t in our control. It\u2019s a government call and we\u2019ll respect whatever they decide. We\u2019re focused on the other three group games.\u201d The stance follows a fraught build-up in which ICC removed Bangladesh from the event after Dhaka refused to travel to India on security grounds\u2014tensions that escalated following the IPL exclusion of Mustafizur Rahman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pressed on a potential knockout meeting with India, Salman said Pakistan would again seek government guidance before taking the field: \u201cIf it\u2019s a semifinal or final, we\u2019ll go back to the authorities and act on their advice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pakistan are drawn with the Netherlands, United States and Namibia in Group A and open their campaign on February 7<\/strong> against the Netherlands. \u201cLast time is history,\u201d Salman said, alluding to Pakistan\u2019s previous loss to the USA. \u201cNew World Cup, new combinations\u2014I want to lead from the front and create an environment where everyone can give their best.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Pakistan captain Agha Salman said it is \u201cunfortunate\u201d that Bangladesh will not feature at the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, telling reporters at the captains\u2019 media day in Colombo that Pakistan \u201cvalues the support of Bangladeshis\u201d and would have preferred them in the tournament. Addressing Pakistan\u2019s boycott of the group-stage match against India, Salman stressed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7201,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7205,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7199\/revisions\/7205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hernet.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}