Pakistan's cricket team arrived in India on Wednesday under tight security ahead of the seven-week long ODI World Cup, their first visit to their neighbour in seven years.
Excited crowds, held back by officers, cheered and shouted the team captain's name Babar Azam, as the Pakistanis arrived at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in the southern city of Hyderabad for the tournament which opens on October 5.
India and Pakistan are bitter adversaries with long-standing political tensions. The teams only play cricket against each other in international tournaments, and usually, the matches are staged in neutral countries.
Captain Babar Azam has played down the hype of facing their rivals, saying ahead of their travel that the team was “not just going to play against India only”.
The tournament involves 48 matches being played over 46 days at 10 different venues with the final set for November 19.
Pakistan are slated to play two warm-up matches – against New Zealand on September 29 and Australia on October 3 – both in Hyderabad.
But with large crowds expected for a Hindu festival on Friday, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) said the first warm-up it will be a closed door match as “per the advice of the local security agencies”.
Pakistan open their World Cup campaign against the Netherlands, before facing arch-rivals India in the over 130,000-seat Ahmedabad Stadium on October 14.
India will begin their campaign against Australia on October 8 followed by the hotly-anticipated clash against Pakistan.
Visas for the Pakistan team to travel to India were issued on Monday, Indian and Pakistani media reported, just 48 hours before they were due to travel.
RESULT
Kolkata Knight Riders 169-7 (20 ovs)
Rajasthan Royals 144-4 (20 ovs)
Kolkata win by 25 runs
Next match
Sunrisers Hyderabad v Kolkata Knight Riders, Friday, 5.30pm
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Sholto Byrnes on Myanmar politics
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
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Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
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