IPL snub to Pakistan players shouldn't have happened: Big B

Ignored by the Indian Premier League franchisees, Pakistani cricketers on Thursday found support from Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan, who lamented the snub and said it should not have happened.

Ignored by the Indian Premier League franchisees, Pakistani cricketers on Thursday found support from Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan, who lamented the snub and said it should not have happened.

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Asked if he felt that it was unfair to leave out the Pakistani players from the IPL, the actor said, "At some stage, you do feel so. There are people who admire them and they have so many good players. This should not have happened."

Bachchan said he favoured cultural exchange between the neighbours.

"It's (IPL) is a business and is privately run. But I myself is part of a campaign which is trying to have exchange of things like culture and sport," he told CNN-IBN channel.

Conceding that sports and politics have been mixed in the past too, Bachchan said, "We do have some strong examples. We did not play with South Africa because of apartheid, the entire western world boycotted (1980) Moscow Olympics because of Soviet-invasion of Afghanistan and there was Tibet issue during the Beijing Olympics. But should we equate it with those incident?"

The actor favoured treading a path of harmony and said, "My path would be to go out and shake hands."