Summary Zimbabwe cricket team landed in Pakistan in the early hours of Tuesday.
LAHORE (AFP) - The Zimbabwe cricket team landed in Pakistan in the early hours of Tuesday, becoming the first Test-playing nation to visit the militancy-wracked South Asian country in six years, Lahore airport officials said.
Zimbabwe are set to play two T20s and three ODIs in a mini-series under high security involving 6,000 police and aerial surveillance by commandos on rooftops and helicopters.
The tour is a first by a full ICC member since Sri Lanka visited in 2009, when their team bus was attacked by RPG and machine-gun wielding militants, with eight people killed and seven players wounded.
Forced to host home games in neutral venues like the United Arab Emirates, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) estimates it has lost $120 million in TV rights and extra overheads.
Even hosting Zimbabwe will cost the PCB more than $1 million, half of which is for the visitors fees and expenses. Not much of the outlay will be recouped by sponsorships and gate proceeds.
An incident-free series is seen as crucial to Pakistan s hopes of ending its sporting isolation.
But risks remain high, and the massacre of 45 minority Shiites in an attack on a bus in Karachi last week nearly prompted Zimbabwe to pull out at the last minute.
