Ijaz Butt meets Pawar in Delhi

Ijaz Butt, the PCB chairman, has begun a meeting with ICC chief Sharad Pawar at the latter's New Delhi residence. While an official statement on his visit is awaited, it is understood that the meeting Thursday will cover the spot-fixing controversy, the resumption of bilateral cricket between India and Pakistan and issues related to World Cup revenues.

Butt checked into a New Delhi hotel on Wednesday evening. While Pawar's office continued to maintain that there was no 'official' meeting lined up between Pawar and Butt, sources in the BCCI indicated that there were plans for an unofficial discussion.

Butt is expected to first bring up the possibility of staging Indo-Pak matches to raise funds for flood relief in Pakistan. "Matches like these will open the door for India-Pakistan cricket to resume," a senior BCCI official said. It was likely that the 'spot-fixing' controversy would crop up, the official said, only later as a secondary point of discussion.

Butt's visit comes in the wake of the spot-fixing scandal, in which four Pakistani players have been questioned by Scotland Yard and three of them - Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif and Salman Butt - have been suspended by the ICC.