New Zealand never agreed in principle to Kenya - Snedden

New Zealand Cricket's chief executive Martin Snedden set the record straight on the nature of New Zealand's involvement in a tri-series with Australia and Pakistan today.

New Zealand will not be taking part in a proposed tri-series in Kenya, Snedden said today.

Snedden said that all he had ever had with the Pakistan Cricket Board, was a 'discussion' about the prospect of a pre-ICC Champions' Trophy tournament with Pakistan and Australia.

"When we agreed on a shortened re-scheduled tour after the September-October tour was cancelled, I saw this tri-series as one way of making up some of the cricket Pakistan missed as a result of the tour's postponement," Snedden said.

The prospect of a pre-tournament series appealed because it was in Asian conditions against good quality opposition.

"But that was as far as it ever got," he said.

After the Karachi bomb went off and New Zealand came home early from the re-scheduled tour, Snedden heard no more about the tri-series and he assumed the issue was never going to be progressed.

Then at the recent International Cricket Council meeting in London, Brigadier Munawar Rana asked if he could have a talk with Snedden about seeing if they could progress the matter. Snedden said, "Yes, let's talk."

They got Australia in and talked with them as well.

"But all it was, was a conversation," he said.

"I said I would not have our players play any cricket in August. I had promised our players a complete break in July and August. They had already earlier agreed to break into an earlier spell in order to make the re-scheduled tour of Pakistan in May.

"I also wasn't going to be prepared to go to a venue that was going to cost us a huge amount of money to get to," he said.

Under the Future Tours Agreement (FTA), teams travelling to countries are required to pay the fares and the players' fees while host countries pick up the internal costs.

"None of it fitted in," Snedden said.

He said Pakistan had made a statement that New Zealand had agreed in principle to the tournament in Kenya but that was not the case at all.

Several venues had been mentioned including Morocco, Australia, England and Sri Lanka.

The day after saying New Zealand had heard nothing from Pakistan about playing in Kenya, a formal proposal was received from Pakistan.

Under its plan, New Zealand would have been required to assemble on August 21 for five matches in Kenya in the last week of August and the first week of September.

"That didn't suit us," Snedden said. He wrote to Pakistan informing them of that.

The other factor about the issue was that Australia were committed under the FTA to play Pakistan in a one-day series, but New Zealand wasn't.

The situation was now over to Pakistan.

"We haven't finalised any build-up. We are in discussions with Cairns, but under the Champions' Trophy agreement, Sri Lanka are obliged to provide us with two warm-up games.

"Pakistan are not shut out but it would be very difficult to fit them in," he said.

Under the FTA when a tour was cancelled, as was the case with New Zealand's original tour of Pakistan as a result of the September 11 terrorist activity in the United States, it was up to the two countries to renegotiate.

"We did that," said Snedden, while also making the point that wasn't clear in the FTA was what happened when the re-scheduled tour was abandoned.

"It is not reasonable to expect the visiting country to go on forever incurring costs," he said.

As part of the obligation to complete the series which was interrupted by the Karachi bomb, Snedden said he had discussed with Brigadier Rana playing a Test before New Zealand's tour to India next year.

"We can either play two Tests or one Test and two or three one-dayers. But the timing is difficult," Snedden said.

"And all of this is just the result of a conversation, nothing else," Snedden said.