Pakistan Cricket Board has confirmed its selection of the United Arab Emirates as the neutral venue for the upcoming Champions Trophy in 2025. This was reported by PCB spokesman Amir Mir in a statement to IANS as, “The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has chosen the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as the neutral venue for the 2025 Champions Trophy.”
“As such, the board informed the ICC about the neutral venue decision. Now, India and Pakistan’s Champions Trophy matches will be in the UAE. The decision regarding the neutral venue for the Champions Trophy was to be made by the host, Pakistan. The final decision was made after a meeting between Mohsin Naqvi and Sheikh Al Nahyan,” he added. Currently in Pakistan, Sheikh Al Nahyan is also the Chairman of the UAE Cricket Board.
The executive board of the International Cricket Council on Thursday confirmed that matches between India and Pakistan in the upcoming ICC events till 2027, including the next year’s Champions Trophy 2025, will be played at neutral venues.
The neutral venue arrangements will apply to the forthcoming ICC Men’s Champions Trophy 2025 (to be hosted by Pakistan) to be played in February and March 2025, ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2025 (to be hosted by India), and ICC Men T20 World Cup 2026, which is also co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka. Likewise, it relates to the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup in 2028 which Pakistan is granted hosting rights.
India and Pakistan play matches only for the World Cup and Asia Cup because of their strained political relations. The last bilateral series between the two countries took place in 2012-13 when Pakistan visited India for a five-match white-ball series.
The Champions Trophy would be played in the course of February and March of the year 2025, even as ICC said the schedule for the flagship tournament would be declared in days to come. Pakistan is the defending champion of the tournament after beating its opponent India by 180 runs in 2017 at The Oval.
The last time the two teams met was in a T20 World Cup earlier this year; played in New York, India won the match by six runs and marched on to win their second trophy in that format.
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