The International Cricket Council (ICC) chief Malcolm Gray has said that the Indian Sports Minister Uma Bharati never ruled out India playing in Pakistan but had only slammed the Board of Control for Cricket in India officials for jumping the gun regarding the official announcement.

"The minister never said India would not play in Pakistan. She only hit out at the Indian board for making the announcement before getting the approval from the country's foreign affairs ministry," Gray said in Sharjah on Tuesday.

"The Indian Sports Minister has written to the ICC explaining their stand," he said adding that India was not averse to playing Pakistan in a multination contest.

Gray admitted that ICC did not have much clout to do anything if India refused to play. "At the most they may lose points" he told reporters. "Now that we have a Test championship in place, what we can do is to deduct the points if a particular country refused to play with the other for political reason," he said.

As for tackling the issue of non-regular venues (as Bharti described some), he said programming of the cricket schedule on a more global basis by the ICC could help solve the problem.

© PTI