Lahore: With the ICC deciding to postpone the Champions Trophy because of players' unwillingness to tour Pakistan, South Africa are likely to host a ODI quadrangular to fill in the gap left by the scrapping of the eight-nation contest.

Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief operating officer Shafqat Naghmi, said after two days of discussions, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and South Africa have confirmed for the quadrangular while India, Australia or New Zealand will most likely be filling in the final spot.

The idea of having such a contest was floated by the PCB after it received a major blow when the International Cricket Council (ICC) was forced to postpone the Champions Trophy because of security fears.

Naghmi said the South Africans responded positively to Pakistan's proposal of having a series of matches in September.

The reason why Pakistan were desperate to have such an event was the fact that the postponement of the Champions Trophy left their national team without any international commitments till November when it will feature in a low-profile, offshore series against the West Indies in Abu Dhabi.

Another reason was that the PCB is set to suffer major losses following the postponement of the Champions Trophy and needed to make some profits to avoid any financial crunch.

Naghmi said that the planned series in South Africa will help PCB make some money. He said that the details of the series are yet to be finalised but added that the contest will roughly take place during the second half of September.

''It would be held more or less around the same time the Champions Trophy was supposed to take place,'' he said.

UNI

Tags: icc, champions trophy, south africa, odi quadrangular, pcb, security concerns.