Stars to miss first test

Press, 30 December 1978, Page 32

Stars to miss first test

NZPA Sydney World Series Cricket yesterday confirmed that it had reached a compromise agreement with the Pakistan Board of Control to avoid a clash over the W.S.C. supertest grand final. But W.S.C.’s managing director, Mr Andrew Caro, refused to release details of the agreement involving its Pakistani contract players selected for an official tour of New Zealand and Australia early next year. When the touring team

was announced recently. World Series Cricket said it would release the Pakistanis, although unspecified conditions were understood to have been raised in negotiation: with the Pakistani board. Since then the W.S.C. world team, which owes much of its success to several of the Pakistani stars, has won through to the .$50,000 winner-take-all supertest grand final, which clashes with Pakistan’s first test against New Zealand, starting in Christchurch on February 2.

Commenting yesterday on a Sydney newspaper report that W.S.C. and the Pakistani board have agreed to share the players, Mr Caro said both sides ha “given a bit” io achieve what he termed a “satisfactory result.” The Sydney “Daily Telegraph” said four of the W.S.C. Pakistanis — probably Imran Khan, Majid Khan, Asif Iqbal, and Zaheer Abbas — would miss the first test in New Zealand to appear in the supertest grand final.

The paper speculated that the test captain, Mushtaq Mohammad, and opening bowler, Safraz Nawaz, would be released along with two other W.S.C. World batsmen, possibly Haroon Rashid and Javed Miandad. Mr Caro said the simplest solution would have been for the New Zealand board to change the dates for the first test. “That has not happened and the result is a compromise that’s not 100 per cent for either party, but its the best we could do,” he said.