People have died protecting our heroes.
Cricketers have been injured playing our game.
It’s all sorts of fucked up.
But good things could be coming from this.
The limbo that Pakistan has been in, essentially since ’98, can finally be ended.
If they choose to play home games in England or somewhere else, they can build themselves up again.
Cricket can win from this horrlbe fucked up situation.
I for one am not ready to lose Pakistan.
And if they settle on a home outside of Pakistan, maybe they can be put back into the loop, become a real test playing nationa again.
Build up their team, start winning matches, and fill the all important whole they have left since they started fading out.
Cricket now has blood on its hands, and it owes it to the people who lost their lives in protecting the game.
Pakistan must continue to play cricket, they were born to play this game, and cricket will be poorer wihtout them.
If they have to play im bumfuch idaho or geelong, they should do it.
Actually, nothing has changed. The threat of violence against any cricket team, or anyone else touring Pakistan, is exactly the same now as it was before it happened. There were very few tours of Pakistan because everybody was told that this would happen. Competent, trained, career security experts stated quite plainly that this is the situation in Pakistan. Every board except for Sri Lanka took the advice.
It always amazes me that people distrust and disregard experts, as if dedicating a massive chunk of your life to something doesn’t give you any more rights to an opinion than the average drunk down the pub. As a professional administicrat (in arts, not sport) I am constantly amazed by people’s capacity to deny good advice. And then when it happens … whoa, they act like no-one could have seen it coming.
This particular happening was clear and obvious and inevitable, for at least four reasons (I’m not endorsing this line of thought, merely illustrating it):
1. An international event, sporting or otherwise, generates huge publicity. That’s what the terrorists are after. There’s no terror if no-one hears about it. Legitimate tactical target.
2. Sports that are popular are popular because they are endorsed and supported by mainstream culture. Terrorists, by definition, are people who feel isolated from and hostile toward mainstream culture. I am assuming that many people in Pakistan hate cricket like my wife hates it, and like I hate Aussie Rules football now that I live in Victoria and have this nonsense constantly jammed down my throat. The perps no doubt saw cricket as a legitimate cultural target.
3. Cricket teams are ambassadors for their government – the pre-series diplomacy and blah-blah that goes on in every country before every international sporting match is steeped in the language of international diplomacy. The team is representing their country. Their country is a political entity. The team are political representatives, and they are representing not their country per se, but the ruling authority of that country. In Sri Lanka’s case they are representative of a western-style democracy that is still fighting a civil war against communists. Hell, Mendis is in the army. Therefore, again (I stress I am not of this opinion, merely illustrating) terrorists could easily convince themselves that a cricket team is a legitimate political target.
4. Cricket is Englsh in origin (Belgium notwithstanding) and for most of its existence international cricket has been administered by the Western powers. I am sure that many Muslim terrorists, and even those of more moderate political beliefs, see cricket as a bastion of Western civilisation, indeed a perpetrator and a propaganda generator of Western values. In fact that is what ‘its just not cricket’ means, isn’t it? “You are not doing it the proper way, the civilised way, the British way, old chap”. Again, legitimate historical target.
The only argument against the above seems to be that terrorists wouldn’t attack sportsmen. Excuse me? Am I the only one who remembers Munich 1972? One of the very first international incidents of political violence to be labled ‘terrorist’. Eleven Isreali athletes shot dead by German terrorists. Sport always has and always will be a target for terrorists.
Sorry that this comment is so long, Jrod. You can un-post it if you want. Its not funny afterall. I just wanted to get it off my chest. Thanks Jrod for providing myself and so many other people with the forum to discuss the things that are important to us.
I am sure you are not the only one who remembered Munich 72 Ned.
But the point is that was 37 years ago, and was an attack against athletes from an “enemy” country.
Sri Lankans (unlike English and Australians for example) would be considered to be unlikely to be part of the Crusader Enemy.
So things have changed.
Ned,
Munich ’72 was an act of terrorism comitted by Palestinian terrorists not German terrorists.
Thanks Nick, I stand corrected and I Wikipediaed it so now I am much better informed. Ironically it was allegedly committed by Yasser Arafat’s boys, no relation to the cricketers, one of whom was playing in this match.
Theres an excellent doco on the event called One Day in September.
The Germans had relaxed security, being only 22 years after the end of WWII they wanted to show the world they had turned into peace loving green hippies and the nazi days were in the past.
Unfortunately the Pal’s saw this and picked the perfect oppurtunity. The German police response was pathetic and they ended up with 11 dead Israeli athletes on German soil. Not a good look.
You are right about Arafat’s Fatah having a hand in it. The irony is The Israeli’s tried to counter Fatah (who were really pussies) by providing covert support to an on the rise Islamic extremist group called Hamas. How’s that working out for them?
SL decided to go to pakistan because of political reasons rather than cricket. I dont mean the cricketers but the cricket officials, but unfortunately it was the team which is affected. Needless to say, Pakistan is not a suitable for cricket, as australia rightly decided 10 years ago.
When I hear the news, I was glad that it happened. You can think that I am a sick person, but I dont feel that way. Because everyday hundreds of people are getting killed by terrorists which gets un-noticed. But incidents like this gets the real attraction, may be atleast this time Pakistan goverment take some real action against terrorists.
Ned, in response to your point number 3 – If it were just a symbolic attack on Westernized democracies, the terrorists would have waited for the Australians or Kiwis to show up.
The way the attack was orchestrated makes it similar to the Mumbai Attacks in 26/11. The Mumbai attacks were preplanned and rehearsed for more than a few months. To get so much ammunition, rocket launchers discretely at one place takes a lot of time and planning.
A few months ago SL was not even supposed to tour Pakistan. The Indians were supposed to tour with matches in Lahore scheduled in late January – early February. Seems like the plan was made in order to attack the Indians and when they bailed out, the unfortunate Sri Lankans became the improvized targets. Call it a conspiracy theory but why would anyone attack the Sri Lankans? Even the Tigers will not do so since Murali is a Tamil. Their remaining clout in Sri Lanka would be finished if anything happened to the biggest Tamil icon in SL
Dhananjay,
The tigers won’t spare Murali for him being Tamil. The tigers have close to a lakh civilians as human shield to protect themselves from the army. To the tigers, anyone who opposes their stance for a separate tamil nation is an enemy-tamil or not. I live in Tamilnadu, and i have heard so many stories about the tigers killing their own brethren in what is a fratricidal violence.
12th man, the civilians are different from Murali. They might be viewing that as collateral damage. Targetting Murali would be a different ball game altogether – they wont do it. I go with Dhananjay’s theory – these operations require immense planning and they couldnt have put this together in a short time. Looks like the visiting Indian cricketers were the real target and the plan might have been put together months ago- and mixing metaphors, the unfortunate Lankans got ‘caught in the crossfire’. Chilling.
There is no reason why they cannot do this in India or Bangladesh. Sub-continent is becoming a dangerous place to tour. Just a few days ago, we were appreciating Taufel and the other umpire for being ‘brave’. Looks like we were all wrong and foolish.
Well, what if Pakistani Cricketers simply play for India, Bangla or Sri Lanka – especially Bangla? I’d love to have Younis Khan instead of Yuvraj Singh in the otherwise settled Indian lineup. Sri Lanka and Bangla can take the rest of the Pakistani cricketers. That way, instead of an uncertain Pakistani team and a woeful Bangla, we could have one solid team in internation cricket? (Yeah, thats the idea, all of them could play for Bangla but I wanted Yuvraj out of Indian lineup)
Raj, you are right in arguing that Murali is not an easy target. My only point was that the Tigers are not representatives of tamil people of Sri Lanka. They are just a faction of Tamils that have taken to violence to achieve their object. And they would attack anyone including Murali, if the need be.
12th man, let’s not get into that politics. There is a lot of things going wrong in Lanka – and we cannot take sides as both sides are at fault.
Coming back to distributing pakistani cricketers among rest of the subcontinent, hows this:
India – GOD, Gambhir, Dravid/Younis, Tendulkar, Laxman, Asim Kamal/Younis, Dhoni, Harbhajan/Umar Gul, Zaheer, Mishra, Ishant
Bangladesh – Butt, Tamim, Misbah, Aftab, Afridi, Rahim, Shakib, Mortaza, Razzak, Pakistani Pacer #1, Pakistani Pacer #2
Raj, keep masturbating….we don’t need any pakistani shit in indian team, drugged bowlers, underage batsman, we dont need that shit anyway..if they want, let them join Bangladesh, you move to dhakka