Scotland's T20 WC Dream Hit By Visa Concerns For Pacer With Pakistani Heritage

Scotland are scrambling to travel to India for the 2026 T20 World Cup after being named as the last-minute replacement for Bangladesh. A major concern for them is getting the visas sorted for their squad members, especially fast bowler Safyaan Sharif, who has Pakistani heritage.

In recent years, due to the sour diplomatic relationship between the neighbors, professionals born in Pakistan or with lineage in the country have found it difficult to obtain Indian visas. Sharif was born in Huddersfield, England, to a Pakistani father and a British-Pakistani mother, and moved to Scotland at the age of seven. A right-arm quick, he has played 90 ODIs and 75 T20Is for Scotland, picking 198 wickets.

“We are all committed [to] working with the ICC to make

that happen,” Cricket Scotland’s CEO Trudy Lindblade said on Monday. “The visa piece is always slightly unknown, and it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got three days or whether you’ve got 45 days.”

“Certainly that’s been our focus in the last 48 hours: just getting those visas done so our players are all ready to go. They’re all in the middle of submitting their visas and we will be there on the ground in India as quickly as we can, so it’s just a matter of time now. [The ICC] can only give us the assurances of the bits that they can control and, absolutely, of the bits that they control, we are working with them and obviously they’re working with the BCCI and local people on the ground there to make sure that we are getting all of that support that we need.”

Also read: ‘Indian Visa Delayed, Not Rejected’: USA Cricket Official Denies Pakistan-Born Cricketer Ali Khan’s Viral Claim

“So, absolutely, [they have given] the assurance that they can provide of things that were in their control. There is a team working very, very hard to not just help us, but to help 19 other teams as well that are also going to a World Cup. But we are their intense focus right now.”

Earlier, a huge uproar was caused when USA pacer Ali Khan stated that he, Shayan Jahangir, Mohammad Mohsin, and Ehsan Adil, all of Pakistani origin, were denied a visa to travel to India. However, it was later confirmed that there was only a ‘delay’ which was eventually.

There’s only about ten days for the World Cup to start on February 7.