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Their forthcoming tour of Sri Lanka finally settled, the West Indies' next overseas assignment, originally scheduled for Pakistan next February and March, is likely to be moved to another country.

According to West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) president Reverend Wes Hall, Pakistan has been devastated by the current United States-led offensive on neighbouring Afghanistan that followed the territorist attacks on New York and Washington September 11 and are not planning to host any tours any time in the near future.

Hall and WICB chief executive Gregory Shillingford attended the International Cricket Council (ICC) meeting in Kuala Lumpur that ended yesterday with a decision to use what it termed independent venues for series scheduled in countries affected by recent horrific events.

The ICC also offered the option of shifting any such series to the country of the opposing team.

They (the Pakistan Cricket Board) are going to write us with their proposal, Hall said by telephone from Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

We'd have to look at the logistics of us saturating our public with a lot of tours, he said, noting that India and New Zealand are scheduled to come to the West Indies between early March and late June next.

It might be easier to play it in a neutral country and we might look at Kenya or somewhere like that but we'll have to sit down and talk.

Hall said Pakistani officials told the ICC meeting they were anxious to fulfil their commitments on the ICC programme but admitted they could not host visiting teams under the present circumstances. New Zealand cancelled a scheduled tour in September two days after the attacks in the United States.

No one knows whether this thing is going to escalate or whether it's going to be over tomorrow, Hall said. If it's over tomorrow, Pakistan can play at home again but that doesn't seem likely.

Hall thought the more immediate problem was England's tour of India, slated to start mid-November.

Although the respective boards agreed at the Kuala Lumpur meeting that the tour should proceed as planned, England players have already expressed fears about going. The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has arranged a meeting with the players in London on Monday to discuss the issue.

Even if the two boards agreed to shift the tour to another country, the time is too short to put in place all the arrangements, such as accommodation, rental of grounds and television rights.

At the same meeting, the ICC introduced stringent new penalities to prevent disruption of its 10-year future tours programme by heavily fining defaulting countries. Non-complying countries could be fined as much as US$2 million.

Hall reiterated that the Sri Lankan board and the Sri Lankan government had given satisfactory assurances of security for the players on the West Indies tour November 1 to December 20.

He said that no cricket would be scheduled three days either side of parliamentary elections December 5.

This was a break in the itinerary between the last of the three Tests and the start of the one-day series in any case, he said. The team would practise but would play no matches.

Hall flies to Jamaica on Monday to speak to the West Indies players at the pre-tour camp and will explain the decision to go ahead with the trip.

I would feel safer playing in Sri Lanka than in England right now, he said. England are in the forefront of the hostilities in Afghanistan, Sri Lanka are not involved in any way.

© The Barbados Nation