‘Is Ahmedabad haunted? Shahid Afridi questions PCB’s reluctance to play at Narendra Modi Stadium

Former Pakan captain Shahid Afridi has lambasted the Pakan Cricket Board (PCB) for their reluctance to play at the Narendra Modi Stadium during the 2023 ODI World Cup.
Shahif Afridi says instead of thinking about the venue the aim should be to beat India at the Narendra Modi Stadium.
“Why are they declining to play on Ahmedabad pitches? Does it hurl fire or is it haunted?,” Afridi told a local news channel in Pakan as quoted Cricket Pakan.
“Go and play-go, play and win. If these are the foreseen challenges, then the only way to overcome them is through a comprehensive victory. What matters at the end of the day is Pakan team’s win,” he said.
Modi Stadium will host the high-profile India vs Pakan match in the ICC 50-over World Cup scheduled for October-November, the first match between the two arch-rivals on Indian soil since 2016.
“The crux only and only lies in there. Take this rather positively. If they (India) are comfortable there, you should go, pull a victory in front of packed Indian crowd and show them what you got,” said Shahid Afridi.
PCB chief Najam Sethi has earlier reacted to reports that suggested that the BCCI was planning to slot the India-Pakan World Cup game at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.

“When I heard that the Pakan match was to be in Ahmedabad, I smiled and said to myself – ‘this is one way to make sure we don’t come to India’. I mean if you’d said Chennai or Kolkata, it might have made sense,” he told this newspaper.
“I don’t want to go into the politics of it but certainly there seems to be a political angle to this because if there’s one city where we might have security issues, it’s Ahmedabad. And therefore, I think the less said about that, the better. It gave the impression that this was a red herring that was thrown in our way to tell us, ‘hey, we are going to play you in Ahmedabad and you watch out. You know who rules Ahmedabad.’”