On the topic itself, I suspected the reason for NZ pullout to be political from the get go because of the dramatic manner it happened and how NZ was so reluctant to talk about the nature of the threat, England's pullout has only confirmed it. Let's not even talk about Australia which hasn't set foot on Pakistan as a team since the turn of this century. Also I don't get the likes of Ramiz asking the team to become no.1 team so that teams line up to play in Pakistan, even if that were to happen, the western teams aren't going to suddenly start touring Pak. The reason they aren't playing in Pakistan looks more and more like a political embargo and it's not like they are refusing to tour because of the quality of the Pakistani team.
At least NZ used a legitimate reason like security threat regardless of whether it was present or not. England didn't even bother using it, it's statement was more like "Sorry Pak, we aren't going to visit your country because...you know..tiredness..you know.. exhaustion..you know..". In any case, the likelihood of western teams touring Pakistan looks bleak right now.
Although I have my differences with Pak's view of the geopolitics of Af-Pak conflict and aired my views on the same in the timepass section, I've always been nostalgic about cricket matches in Pakistan in the past and always loved whenever cricket games happened in Pakistan in the last few years. So the latest developments are a huge letdown to the game itself and not just Pakistan. India doesn't play bilateral cricket with Pakistan because they have a long running bitter rivalry as countries (and even that shouldn't stop sports), but the likes of Eng, Aus and NZ share none of that bad blood with Pak. They're literally pushing Pak into a corner where they are forced to play outside Pakistan due to reasons outside of sport.
In my opinion, Pak should not agree to play in a neutral country no matter what, as doing so would only push cricket returning to Pak by another decade or so. Pakistan should play whatever countries that tour them like SL, Bang, WI and even SA. Pak should ask all the teams they're scheduled to play with to tour their country and that they'd provide full security, and if they refuse to tour, ask for either forfeit or cancellation of the fixtures. Western teams have declined to tour countries like Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka in the past world cups and those resulted in only forfeits to the home team. Pak should continue to tour western countries as not doing so would hamper the development of their cricketers as players but refuse to play their home fixtures in neutral territories at any cost as long as the security situation in the country is stable. Slowly Pakistan would gather sympathy in cricketing media for its position (it's already happening) and that might help cricket returning to Pakistan. Because right now, Pakistan cricket is literally being bullied around and getting strangled due to political reasons and I think Pak should be ready to fight the tough battle to see cricket returning to their country, even if it means a few short term losses.
