Rashid Khan, the Pakistan Tennis Federation (PTF) secretary, said in a statement that the back-to-back world-ranking tournaments scheduled to get under way on October 25 had been cancelled in the wake of the twin suicide bombing at the International Islamic University earlier this week.
The two tournaments were allotted to Pakistan by the International Tennis Federation (ITF) at its annual meet in Madrid last July at the special request of PTF president Dilawar Abbas. “In view of the current circumstances and as per the statement of Federal Interior Minister Rahman Malik that Pakistan is now in a state of war, the ITF in consultation with PTF on the security issue agreed that running these international tournaments during this troubled time in Islamabad is not advisable as the safety of national and international junior players is very important, hence these tournaments are cancelled. PTF has asked ITF that they will jointly review the security situation and then can be again organised at some later stage.”
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