Michael Beloff will head a three-member dispute panel that will hear proceedings between the Pakistan Cricket Board and the Board of Control for Cricket in India in Dubai from October 1 to 3.
The PCB had approached the International Cricket Council asking it to set up the Dispute Resolutions Committee because, it said, the BCCI had not honoured an MoU as per which the Indian and Pakistani teams were to play bilateral series in 2014 and 2015.
The PCB had sought compensation to the tune of US $70 million from the BCCI.
Beloff will be assisted by Jan Paulsson and Dr Annabelle Bennett in the panel established under the terms of reference of the ICC DRC. The three-day hearing will take place under Article 10.4 of the Terms of Reference of the DRC, an ICC release said, adding that the decision of the panel would be ‘non-appealable and shall remain the full and final decision in relation to the matter and binding on all parties’.
While PCB insist the MoU is in place, the BCCI say there is no leg for the PCB to stand on as the MoU had not been signed officially. “The two Boards may have come to a loose agreement so that the PCB would support the BCCI’s big three governance model move in 2014, but letterheads were not used,” a BCCI official in the know of things has stated in the past.
The BCCI argument is that a bilateral series against Pakistan needed the nod of the government of India, a line they are likely to parrot in front of Beloff and his team.
India and Pakistan haven’t played a bilateral series since a short limited-overs in India that ended in early January, 2013. The two teams last played a Test series, also in India, in December 2007 with India winning the three-match showdown 1-0.