Champions Trophy 2025: Pakistan to host India in Lahore

LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has proposed hosting all of India’s matches in the Champions Trophy, scheduled to be held in February 2025, in Lahore, ARY News reported on Wednesday, citing sources.

Sources told ARY News that the PCB has sent the draft schedule of the Champions Trophy matches to the International Cricket Council (ICC) for approval.

The proposal will be presented at the ICC Board meeting in July, which will be held in Sri Lanka.

Earlier, it was reported that Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi are the three venues proposed by the PCB in the initial draft schedule of the 2025 Champions Trophy, sent recently to the ICC.

“We’ve sent the schedule for the matches in Pakistan for the ICC Champions Trophy,” PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi said at a press conference in Lahore.

“The ICC’s security team came and we had a very good meeting. They looked at arrangements here and we’ll also share stadium upgrade plans with them. We’re continuously in touch with the ICC. We are trying to ensure we host a very good tournament in Pakistan.”

Pakistan and India have not played a Test since 2007/08 and a bilateral series in any format since 2012/13 due to the long-standing political tensions between the two neighbouring countries.

The fierce rivals, however, only came face to face in multi-national events like Asia Cup and ICC World Cups.

Last year, the PCB had to adopt a hybrid model while hosting the Asia Cup, whereby some games were played in Pakistan but all of India’s games and the final were held in Sri Lanka. A month later Pakistan travelled to India to play in the 50-over World Cup.

Champion Trophy rights

Last year in December, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) signed the ICC Champions Trophy 2025 hosting rights agreement with the International Cricket Council (ICC) in Dubai.

According to a statement, the former PCB Management Committee Chairman Zaka Ashraf was joined by ICC General Counsel Jonathan Hall in the signing of the hosting rights to Pakistan at the ICC headquarters.

The PCB in its capacity has already intimated the government to provide foolproof security to visiting international teams for the Champions Trophy.

For the unversed, ICC, in November 2021, announced a series of international cricket competitions for both men and men in the 2024–2031 cycle, which also features the 2025 and 2029 Champions Trophy editions.

The ICC Champions Trophy 2025 will be an eight-tournament and the structure will follow previous editions with two groups of four, semi-finals and final.