Rob Houwing

Finally, it has struck at cricket’s very heart - its most luminary competitors.

Previously, many leading players around the planet have had “stories to tell”, as it were, about close shaves with terror, most commonly on the volatile Asian Subcontinent.

Ask the New Zealand national team: in 2002 a suicide bomber killed 11 people and shattered the windows of their team hotel in Karachi three hours before the start of the second Test.

The ashen-faced Kiwis were soon afterwards seen lugging their equipment “coffins” (unfortunate terminology, sometimes) out through the smouldering rubble as they flew home, abandoning the Pakistan tour.

Tuesday’s event carried deeper ramifications for the game, even if no life-costing terror attack should ever be trivialised: some of cricket’s superstars - the shop-front symbols of its sustainability as a major international sporting code - were actually targeted, and wounded.

The merest issuing of this list, not long after terrorists had struck at a bus carrying the Sri Lankan side to Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore, for the third day’s play of the second Test against Pakistan, would have send shudders down the spines of their fellow-Test players across the globe: “Mahela Jayawardene: cut to ankle; Kumar Sangakkara: shrapnel cut to shoulder; Ajantha Mendis: shrapnel wound to back …”

These, to many, especially in the cricket-obsessed mid-Asian region, are the game’s near-equivalent to football’s Ronaldos, Messis and Kakas: undisputed icons.

Jayawardene and Sangakkara boast thousands of Test and one-day international runs between them. Mendis is tipped as the next big thing as a “mystery spinner”, destined to assume the mantle of ageing Muttiah Muralitharan (he was reportedly not injured) as a Sri Lankan slow-bowling legend.

Paid its distasteful visit

Sri Lanka were the fielding side with the Lahore Test as it stood, Mendis and “Murali” doubtless training their thoughts, as the bus neared the ground, to putting in loads of overs on the venue’s benign pitch as they aimed to nip in the bud a promising Pakistani first innings.

That is, until carnage paid its distasteful visit, putting a whole new turn on things as sliders and doosras suddenly tumbled down the list of issues that really matter.

Forget that the word “minor” mercifully accompanied the player injury list in virtually each instance … the Sri Lankan national team had come within a whisker, it seems, of their lives, and others in the vicinity were not so fortunate.

Those players on the bus might have been Indians, or they might have been Australians. Or, of course, South Africa’s own pride and joy, its Proteas. Every cricketing nation will be uncomfortably digesting those thoughts.

Cricket tours to all of Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka have, like it or not, carried a “should we go, shouldn’t we go?” sort of yo-yo dilemma for a long time, with no-shows and mid-series abandonments a regrettable but inevitable part of the landscape.

Really worrying, though, is that the environment in these three proud and fanatical cricketing nations appears to be getting less rather than more reassuring from a safety point of view.

The dust is still settling, after all, on the city-wide terror siege of India’s throbbing Mumbai in late November, which led to the England side flying home before eventually, and commendably, agreeing to return for the Tests after the curtailment of the one-day series.

Pakistan has suffered most from political unrest, and perceptions (not always unanimously justified) of safety concern: Australia have not toured there for 10 years.

It had been hoped that this Sri Lankan visit, after a lengthy Test “gap” period for the country, might help re-open the gate to the broader galaxy of international powers.

Darkest day in the history of Pakistan cricket

One of the saddest commentaries on the situation comes from Kamran Abbasi, a perceptive writer on Cricinfo: “Brave Sri Lanka did not deserve this insult … the least of the consequences of this disaster is that those who have advocated the continuation of international cricket in Pakistan, including me, have been proved wrong.

“No international team will now visit Pakistan. This is the darkest day in the history of Pakistan cricket and it occurred in a pleasant suburb of Lahore, a once great city of gardens and tranquillity, not far from my own family home. This is the end.”

Pakistan was due to be one of four Subcontinental homes (with India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh) for the 2011 World Cup: that status hangs by a flimsy thread.

But there could be a much wider backlash, too: even before the bus attack, some commentators had been quietly fearing the seeds of a new trend, in which predominantly “Western” cricketers make blanket decisions, rightly or wrongly, not to visit the Subcontinent as a whole.

After all, there have been renewed reviews, in the wake of the bloody Mumbai events, of security arrangements surrounding the looming, second season of the cash-flush Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 competition, featuring household names from around the world and including the likes of Graeme Smith, JP Duminy and Dale Steyn.

Firm policy decisions

India has ascended imperiously in recent years to economic juggernaut of world cricket, and for financial reasons alone many of the world’s leading players – especially younger, single ones – will probably continue to “take their chances” (if that is indeed how they view the situation) in pursuit of the unmatchable riches on offer there.

But what if the nucleuses of some established Test and ODI squads come to firm policy decisions not to visit India or, indeed, any of its neighbours? Is a routinely diluted core cricket product on the Subcontinent -- with traditional forms of the game at something of a precarious crossroads anyway -- not very far away?

Potential for polarisation and some resentment exists, even if the game being split along the “First v Third World” lines of old is unlikely, and to be guarded against at all costs.

The world governing body, the International Cricket Council, is not always renowned for its stealth, diplomatic nous or pro-activity. This a good time for it to display decisive leadership -- there may be no choice.

It is confronted by a delicate and deeply complex issue, because security for the game’s participants and enthusiasts is one of those “no middle ground” necessities.

Yet cricket has to play its part, simultaneously, in sustaining its modern principles of inclusiveness, ensuring that the game’s community stands together and is not driven apart by evil and bloodshed.

At this juncture, there can be no room for wrong ‘uns …

Rob is Sport24's chief writer.

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