Leg­endary West In­dies bats­man Bri­an Lara turned down a $1.5 mil­lion dol­lar of­fer to take part in two Twen­ty20 match­es in Pak­istan to­day and to­mor­row, which are in­tend­ed to rein­tro­duce in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et to the coun­try.

Lara last night con­firmed that he had been ap­proached by or­gan­is­ers but felt that as­so­ci­at­ing him­self with an event that was not sanc­tioned by ei­ther the In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Coun­cil (ICC)?or the Pak­istan Crick­et Board (PCB) would be send­ing the wrong mes­sages to the rest of the crick­et­ing world. "Yes, an of­fer was made to me," Lara re­vealed.

Lara said he did not think it would be fair for him to be play­ing in the match­es while the rest of the world's top crick­eters re­mained un­con­vinced that Pak­istan was safe. "Un­til such time as the gov­ern­ing body in Pak­istan is able to con­vince the rest of the world that the best safe­ty mech­a­nisms have been put in place, and the ICC agrees, I would have to say no."

There has been no in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et in Pak­istan since March 2009 when a Sri Lan­ka team bus was at­tacked. Two for­mer West In­dies play­ers Ri­car­do Pow­ell and Jer­maine Law­son are in­clud­ed in an In­ter­na­tion­al XI to be led by Sri Lan­ka's Sanath Jaya­suriya. They face a Pak­istan All Stars XI team un­der Shahid Afri­di at the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in Karachi to­day and to­mor­row.

The PCB?has dis­as­so­ci­at­ed it­self from the event which has been or­gan­ised by Dr Mo­ham­mad Ali Shah, the Sind Gov­ern­ment's sports min­is­ter. Yes­ter­day Ehsan Mani, the for­mer ICC chief told ES­P­N­cricin­fo that though the two match­es will boost Pak­istan's rep­u­ta­tion as a vi­able host for in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et, they won't be enough to con­vince Test teams to play in the coun­try yet.

"I do not think that these match­es will have an im­me­di­ate im­pact in per­suad­ing ICC Full Mem­ber teams to tour Pak­istan but it is a step in the right di­rec­tion," Mani told ES­P­N­cricin­fo. "The In­ter­na­tion­al XI is a small but sig­nif­i­cant step in the con­fi­dence build­ing process to as­sure over­seas play­ers and teams that Pak­istan is open for crick­et and it is safe for over­seas play­ers to come to Pak­istan."

How­ev­er the PCB has stressed that the games are un­of­fi­cial and are un­sanc­tioned, and have left Sindh sports min­is­ter Dr Mo­ham­mad Ali Shah to deal with most of the arrange­ments. "I was dis­ap­point­ed to read that the PCB had dis­as­so­ci­at­ed it­self from the match­es; it ap­pears that PCB is cov­er­ing it­self in case some­thing goes wrong," Mani said. "This gives to­tal­ly the wrong mes­sage. The PCB should have been very much in­volved, in­clud­ing as­sur­ing it­self that ad­e­quate se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments are in place. It is dis­grace­ful that the ini­tia­tive to con­vince play­ers to come to Pak­istan is not be­ing led by the PCB but by the Sindh gov­ern­ment.

"The PCB's ap­proach to bring­ing in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et back to Pak­istan is flawed," Mani said. "It tried to first per­suade and then bul­ly Bangladesh to tour Pak­istan. The PCB does not seem to un­der­stand that be­fore a full in­ter­na­tion­al tour can take place, teams such as the In­ter­na­tion­al XI should tour Pak­istan to pro­vide a de­gree of com­fort to the ICC Mem­ber coun­tries."

Pak­istan crick­et chief Za­ka Ashraf, though, has said the re­vival of in­ter­na­tion­al crick­et is his top pri­or­i­ty but ap­par­ent­ly ac­cept­ed the goal is tough to achieve in the near fu­ture. While talk­ing to ES­P­N­cricin­fo last month, he called the ap­proach of the crick­et­ing world to­wards tour­ing Pak­istan as 'rigid'.

Mani said the PCB need­ed to be ful­ly aware of the steps nec­es­sary for the re­turn of in­ter­na­tion­al tours to the coun­try. "The PCB clear­ly does not un­der­stand the pol­i­tics of crick­et and the pres­sures on cer­tain coun­tries not to tour Pak­istan by oth­ers with a dif­fer­ent agen­da."