England refuse to play in Karachi

According to a senior Pakistani cricket official, England have refused to play a Test in the troubled city of Karachi during their winter tour of the country, which gets underway in October.

England, who clinched a thrilling victory in near-darkness on their last visit to Karachi in December 2000, are expected to decide in ten days' time whether they are prepared to play in two one-day internationals in the city, according to Saleem Altaf of the Pakistan Cricket Board.

"They have agreed to play one limited-overs international in Karachi, but when we pressed for two back-to-back matches in Karachi, they said they will decide in the next ten days," Altaf said. "They will go by what their security experts and the high commission in Islamabad told them."

England's provisional schedule had included three Tests in Karachi, Faisalabad and Lahore and one-day games in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Karachi, with the tour beginning on October 25 and ending on December 22. But Karachi has a history of religious and ethnic violence, and England have long been wary of playing any cricket there.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Australia and West Indies have both refused to tour Pakistan, while Karachi has been rejected as a Test venue by South Africa and India after a bomb blast outside New Zealand's team hotel in May 2002, in which 14 people were killed.

In recent months, Karachi has been rocked by a series of deadly shootings as well as a suicide bombing at a mosque and the burning-down of a KFC restaurant in recent months. Two English experts, Andy Allman and Douglas Dick, have spent the last week assessing security at the various grounds, while a two-member England & Wales Cricket Board delegation, consisting of John Carr, the operations manager, and Richard Bevan, the players' representative, arrived in Pakistan on July 3.