Online reports suggest that Pakistani team Faisalabad Wolves will not be participating in the Champions League t20 this year after the Indian government refused to provide visas to the Wolves team players.
The Indian government has said they will not be able to provide for the security of the Pakistani players which means that the Wolves could have to give the tournament a miss.
Faisalabad had won the Faysal Bank Super Eight T20 Cup under the captaincy of Misbah ul Haq and had made it to the qualifying round of the Champions League t20. They were to take on the Sunrisers Hyderabad, Otago Volts and a Sri Lanka qualifier to decide on which two teams would go through to the next stage of the tournament - the main draw.
The 10-team competition was to see the sides divided into two groups of five each with the top two from each group going through to the semi-finals.
This will be the fifth season of the Champions League t20 and the only time a Pakistani team had played in the competition was in 2012. Strained relations relations between the governments have meant that Pakistani teams weren’t invited to the tournament till last year when Sialkot Stallions participated in the qualifiers.
The Stallions did not make it to the main draw last season.
It now remains to be seen how will this affect the format of the qualifiers and whether only the three remaining teams will fight for the two spots in the main draw of the competition.