Daily Sports

Even after giving up their claim to host the 2011 World Cup matches, Pakistan Cricket Board claimed on Friday that the strife-torn country may still get to host some games if the security situation improves in the next few months.

"We can ask the ICC to send a security delegation to review the security situation in Pakistan and if the situation has improved we can end up still hosting some of our matches at home," Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Ejaz Butt said.

Butt, however, made it clear that the final decision would be with the ICC and the hosting of matches would depend on teams willing to tour Pakistan.

"But we are hopeful because already the security situation is improving in Pakistan and it will hopefully get better in next five to six months," he said on Friday.

Pakistan was stripped of its share of 14 World Cup matches by the ICC board in April after the Sri Lankan cricket team came under a terrorist attack in Lahore in which six policemen were killed and six players were injured.

Pakistan mounted a legal challenge against the ICC to get back the hosting rights and a final settlement was negotiated yesterday after talks between Butt and ICC President David Morgan.

Under the settlement, Butt said Pakistan now has to withdraw all its legal petitions against the ICC in 15 days including the one over the shifting of the World Cup secretariat from Lahore to Mumbai.

"We are in return guaranteed that we will retain hosting rights of our matches which will, however, be held in the other World Cup host countries. But we will paid around 1500 million rupees as compensation by the ICC including the hosting fees for the matches," Butt said.

The PCB chief said it was a good deal for Pakistan although it was disappointing not to be able to host World Cup matches.

"I think at a time when teams are not willing to tour Pakistan and India has frozen bilateral ties with us we needed this World Cup money. Because we don't want a situation where we have to go around with a begging bowl."

Butt also defended the decision to file a legal challenge against the ICC in the first place. "All the decisions were taken after consulting our lawyers. We took decisions after careful thinking and I think today we have emerged with lot of benefits from this dispute because of the fact that we challenged the ICC decision legally," he said.

Butt also said that Pakistan had proposed hosting its share of matches at Abu Dhabi and Dubai but India opposed the move.

"Simply because there is no clause in the World Cup agreement the ICC has with the host countries that allow the matches to be held outside the host countries," he said.