LAHORE - Pakistan has been allocated the hosting rights of the inaugural World T20 Deaf Cricket Cup in September-October next year.
“In all, 10 countries including Australia, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, Nepal, Sri Lanka, South Africa and hosts Pakistan will be taking part in the grand event which will be held here in the city,” said Pakistan Deaf Cricket Association (PDCA) manager Zaheer Uddin Babar here on Thursday.
The mega event was allocated by the Deaf International Cricket Council (DICC) at its meeting held recently at Dubai. PDCA president Raza Rafi, secretary Irfan Miraj and Zaheer attended the meting which took important decisions for further development of deaf cricket across the globe.  Zaheer said Pakistan faced a strong competition from India as far as getting the hosting of the event was concerned. “We gave a detailed presentation to plead our case and the successful hosting of the Deaf Asia Cricket Cup earlier this year in Lahore convinced all the stake holders that Pakistan is capable of organising the first edition of World T20 Deaf Cup. In our presentation, we pointed out that fool proof security was provided in the Asia Cup and efforts would be made to hold the World Cup in a better way.”
“The participating countries of the Asia Cup put their weight behind Pakistan and then the house decided to allocate it to us,” he added.  The PDCA official said they were thankful to Pakistan Cricket Board especially its chairman Chaudhary Zaka Ashraf for supporting the cause of deaf cricket in Pakistan and internationally. “We had the full backing of the PCB when we organised the Asia Cup and now the PCB chief has assured us his all-out support for holding the World Cup in a trend-setting manner in Pakistan. The staging of Deaf World Cup will portray a better image of Pakistan abroad.”
He said all the delegates of the meeting also visited the ICC headquarters as well as the ICC global academy. “We had productive meetings with ICC development programme manager ND Hobbs and ICC Global Academy manager David Jenking who assured ICC’s support for the uplift of deaf cricket,” he added. He said the ICC officials told them that the cricket’s ruling body will recognise the disabled cricket including deaf cricket by year 2015 and they have provided the documents containing the laid down criteria to get PDCA affiliated with ICC.
The PDCA manager said they would be fulfilling the necessary criteria in coming three months and would send all the necessary documents to ICC for getting its affiliation. “Soon, they will be holding a meeting with the high-ups of the PCB to discuss important matters to start their preparations for the Deaf World Cup,” he concluded.