Cricket Australia experts to check security in Pakistan

Cricket Australia has sent three representatives to Pakistan to inspect security arrangements for the Australia A team's tour in September. The team included Reg Dickason, a security consultant, along with a Cricket Australia official and a representative of the Australian Players Association. Australia A will play two four-day unofficial Tests and three one-dayers in Rawalpindi and Lahore.

Major (retd) Javed Manj, a PCB official who is accompanying the Australian delegation, said the visit was a routine one since the venues for the tour had already been decided. "They are here to just inspect the venues and meet with security officials to get first-hand knowledge of the arrangements being made for their players," Manj was quoted as saying in The News. "It is more of a liaison role with local authorities to assist with ground security and that sort of thing."

Dickason accompanied Australia on their tour to Pakistan in 1998, and was also with the New Zealand team when it toured Pakistan in 2002. That tour was subsequently abandoned when a bomb blast outside their hotel in Karachi forced the team to abandon the tour and return home. Dickason was also responsible for Mark Waugh's security, when he appeared before the Lahore High Court in September 1998 in connection with the match-fixing scandal.

The Cricket Australia visit follows just a few weeks after the ECB sent two security experts to inspect arrangements for England's tour, which begins in October this year. England rejected a proposal to play a Test match in Karachi for security reasons and settled for a one-dayer instead.