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LAHORE: Pakistan Cricket Board will not involve fully the respective cricket associations in the organisation of matches during the next month's home series against India.

"It is a top class cricket event and we will not let the associations to be fully involved with PCB to organise the matches, but, obviously they will be alongside the PCB", said Ramiz Raja, Chief Executive, PCB at a news conference here Saturday.

To a question, Ramiz said, though the provincial cricket bodies have been dissolved throughout the country and previous cricket bodies (city cricket associations) have been restored but PCB cannot purely rely on them to organise the matches.

In the past PCB and the respective city cricket associations were jointly organising the matches and they (associations) were getting a due share from the gate money but the present set up of the Board has stopped this practice and instead organised the matches itself during the home series last year.

Answering a question, Raja, said it was not a setback that the touring side will not be playing test matches at Karachi and Peshawar as one-day games will be staged there and people will be watching top class cricket. "Our priority was to convince the Indian side to undertake its tour and we did not insist on test matches at both the centres (Karachi and Peshawar) as any such move could have jeopardise the tour", he said.

PCB official admitted that Peshawar and Karachi were no-go areas for quality cricket in the past and said it was a success on part of PCB to convince the Indian side to play one-day games there.

Highlighting PCB efforts in the past eight months to persuade the Indian cricket Board to keep the tour on, he said, firm assurances were given as far as security of the Indian team was concerned. "The touring side will be provided top security during its visit, even better than the security being provided to the head of states during their visits to Pakistan", he said.

Raja said there would not financial losses for not having test matches at Karachi and Peshawar and PCB will achieve the set target of revenue generation of Rs 800 million. He said it will be a great series in which the Pakistan public will extend their traditional respect and hospitality to the visitors. "At the same time, I am convinced that it would be a controversy-free and trouble-free series and at the end of the day, it will be cricket that will emerge the winner irrespective of which team wins the Test or one-day series", he added.

PCB official said the one-day series will be played before the Tests because of political reasons. "The BCCI requested us for the change of format because of the expected elections in India in April. They (BCCI) further argued that if the one-day series was played in the second half of the series, the public will lose interest in the matches. We showed flexibility because we understand the importance of this series. I can further say here that we were in constant touch with the concerned government departments and necessary advice and approvals have been sought from them."

Answering a question, he said, Faisalabad was not dropped from hosting any match due to security reasons as it has already organised a number of international matches during last year when Bangladesh, South Africa and New Zealand toured Pakistan. "That is why we have given attention to Multan as it has a top class stadium and allied facilities", he said.

Ramiz said the itinerary was delayed because of several reasons, one of the reasons was certainly the visit of the three-man BCCI delegation that was here last week. "We sent two proposed itineraries according to which the tour was to start from March 5. Now, on our request, the arrival of the Indian team has been delayed for five days so that we can get the breathing space to complete our logistical, ticketing and up-gradation work in time. Also, Andy Atkinson, who will be preparing pitches for the series, will be arriving in Lahore on March 6," he concluded.