Karachi, Aug 12 - Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Ijaz Butt Wednesday hit back at a media report suggesting he had failed to work out a strategy to persuade international teams to again play in the country.

Denying a report in 'The News' which said that the PCB was not making concrete efforts for reviving international cricket in Pakistan, Butt said: 'We do realise that at some stage we would need to have teams visiting Pakistan and as a step in this direction, we recently invited Zimbabwe U-19 team to Pakistan.

However, there were still some apprehensions at their end which led us decide that we would send our U-19 team to Zimbabwe later this year. We are continuing with these efforts with the belief that in the near future international cricket will return to Pakistan,' Butt added.

On the suggestion of inviting a World XI to Pakistan, the PCB chief said: 'Yes we did receive a proposal from Tony Grieg regarding a World XI tour to Pakistan. Having evaluated it, we found that the costs were too high and perhaps the timing of the tour would not have served the purpose for us.'

Butt also claimed that the PCB is making all out efforts to boost cricket in Pakistan.

'Playing our home series abroad is a huge cost for us but when we weigh the benefits of providing an uninterrupted programme of tours for our senior and junior teams, we realise that this is money well spent.