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(Adds official confirmation, quotes, details) By N.Ananthanarayanan NEW DELHI, Feb 17 - India have scrapped Ahmedabad
as a test venue for the home series against Pakistan starting
next week after the visitors raised security concerns. The Ahmedabad test has been shifted to Calcutta, the
president of the Indian cricket board said on Thursday. Ahmedabad witnessed some of the country's worst religious
riots in 2002, during which around 2,000 people died. President Ranbir Mahendra told reporters that a redrawn
itinerary would be announced this week and the tour, scheduled
to start on February 25, might be delayed by a few days. Pakistan are likely to play a sixth one-day international in
the western city as part of a compromise. The teams were
originally scheduled to play five one-dayers and three tests. "We'll propose to Pakistan to play an additional one-day
match in Ahmedabad in place of the test," Mahendra told a news
conference after a working committee meeting of the Board of
Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). "We expect them to agree." The Pakistan Cricket Board said earlier on Thursday it would
consider cancelling the tour if the Ahmedabad test was retained. "We can't rule out the fact that the Indian board might not
accept our request of shifting the test match from Ahmedabad and
the tour can be affected," Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman
Shaharyar Khan told Reuters. The log-jam took a diplomatic turn when Indian foreign
minister Natwar Singh, who was in Pakistan for peace talks,
spoke to Shaharayar Khan in a bid to end the impasse. The Indian board last month proposed Mohali and Bangalore
for the other two tests. The initial five one-dayers have been
set for Cochin, Vishakapatnam, New Delhi, Jamshedpur and Kanpur. The series will be Pakistan's first in India in over six
years due political tensions between the neighbours. India went to Pakistan for a test tour last year after a
13-year gap following a thaw in relations. India won the tests
2-1 and the one-dayers 3-2. The BCCI was unable to say if fans would be able to watch
the series on television because of an ongoing court battle with
India's biggest listed media firm, Zee Telefilms, in a Madras
court over TV rights. The board backed out of its four-year, a
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