ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Super League will go ahead despite the coronavirus outbreak and the withdrawal Friday of 10 foreign players.
The Pakistan Cricket Board said English players Alex Hales, Tymal Mills, Jason Roy, James Vince, Tom Banton, Liam Dawson, Lewis Gregory and Liam Livingstone are among those who will be flying home.
Carlos Brathwaite of the West Indies and Rilee Rossouw of South Africa will also be leaving the Twenty20 event.
All players were given the option of returning home after a conference call between PCB officials and franchise owners on Friday.
“It is important to emphasize and clarify that the main concern of many of the players who have chosen to return home revolves around avoiding a potential situation where they might become stranded either due to flight cancellations or border closures in their own countries,” PCB chief executive Wasim Khan said in a statement. “We will continue to assess and review the situation and will not hesitate to make what we believe are the right decisions for everyone involved.”
While the PCB has yet to decide whether the four remaining games in Lahore — including the final on March 22 — will be played without fans, it has already announced that the four matches in Karachi’s 33,000-seat National Stadium will be played without spectators.
Peshawar Zalmi, which will take on Multan Sultans in Karachi, will be most affected with the withdrawal of the foreign players after Brathwaite, Dawson, Gregory, Livingstone and Banton decided to go home.
There have been more than 128,000 cases and 4,700 deaths globally since the virus outbreak started late last year.
Most people quickly recover from the virus after experiencing only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia.
According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks.
PSL to go ahead despite 10 foreign cricketers leaving
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PSL to go ahead despite 10 foreign cricketers leaving
- Players were given the option of returning home after a conference call between PCB officials and franchise owners on Friday
- Four PSL matches in Karachi’s 33,000-seat National Stadium will be played without spectators
Rating firm S&P says it won’t rush Iran war downgrades, sees risks for countries like Pakistan
- Agency says it is monitoring indebted energy importers as higher oil prices strain finances
- Gulf economies seen better placed to weather shock, though Bahrain flagged as vulnerable
LONDON: S&P Global said it would not make any knee-jerk sovereign rating cuts following the outbreak of war in the Middle East, but warned on Thursday that soaring oil and gas prices were putting a number of already cash-strapped countries at risk.
The firm’s top analysts said in a webinar that the conflict, which has involved US and Israeli strikes against Iran and Iranian strikes against Israel, US bases and Gulf states, was now moving from a low- to moderate-risk scenario.
Most Gulf countries had enough fiscal buffers, however, to weather the crisis for a while, with more lowly rated Bahrain the only clear exception.
Qatar’s banking sector could also struggle if there were significant deposit outflows in reaction to the conflict, although there was no evidence of such strains at the moment, they said.
“We don’t want to jump the gun and just say things are bad,” S&P’s head global sovereign analyst, Roberto Sifon-Arevalo, said.
The longer the crisis was prolonged, though, “the more difficult it is going to be,” he added.
Sifon-Arevalo said Asia was the second-most exposed region, due to many of its countries being significant Gulf oil and gas importers.
India, Thailand and Indonesia have relatively lower reserves of oil, while the region also had already heavily indebted countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka whose finances would be further hurt by rising energy prices.
“We are closely monitoring these (countries) to see how the credit stories evolve,” Sifon-Arevalo said.
