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| Shiv Sena reiterates anti-Pakistan stance at IPL |
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Saturday, May 17, 2008
KARACHI: Extremist Hindu party Shiv Sena is once again back with its anti-Pakistan agenda.
After making sure that Pakistan’s cricket team cannot play any match in Mumbai, they now want to make it sure that no Pakistani is allowed to feature in an Indian Premier League (IPL) game in the Maharashtra capital.
On Friday just hours before the start of Kolkata Knight Riders away game against Mumbai Indians, a top Shiv Sena leader renewed the group’s threat to stop Pakistan cricketers from playing on Indian soil.
Uddhav Thackeray, Shiv Sena’s executive president said that no Pakistani cricketer will be allowed to play in India as “the Pakistanis are enemies” of India.
Shiv Sena is an influential party in Mumbai and has a hardline anti-Pakistan policy.
However, Pakistani cricket officials believe that their cricketers will be completely safe in India during their IPL stay.
“We have complete faith in the security provided to our players by the Indian cricket board and the authorities in India,” Shafqat Naghmi, Pakistan Cricket Board’s Chief Operating Officer, told ‘The News’.
Naghmi said that the PCB has no plans to raise the issue with the BCCI that is hosting the multi-million-dollar IPL.
“There is no need for it because they (BCCI) know their job,” he said.
Naghmi said that Pakistan provide the best possible security arrangements for foreign cricketers visiting this country and hope that the Indians will do the same.
Mumbai Indians — the home team — have no Pakistani players but Shah Rukh Khan’s Kolkata have in their team four cricketers — Shoaib Akhtar, Umar Gul, Mohammad Hafeez and Salman Butt.
“They (Pakistanis) are the enemies of the entire nation and we have been opposing their playing here for many years now,” Thackeray told reporters in Mumbai.
It seemed as if the threat was directly aimed at SRK’s Kolkata, playing in Mumbai for the first time.
When asked about the party’s plan of action against the Pakistani players, Thackeray limited himself to saying, “Let the others speak out against them as well.”
Over the last two decades, Sena has been opposing Pakistani teams and has indulged in tactics like digging up the pitch at Wankhede Stadium before the match due to which Mumbai has not hosted a single match between arch rivals India and Pakistan for many years now.
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ISSN 1563-9479 
