The cover of Time Magazine in July 2007 screamed: ‘Pakistan – The Most Dangerous Country On Earth’. In August of that year I took up the position of coach of the most dangerous country on the planet’s national cricket team. In the following 15 months I didn’t find the team, or the country especially dangerous at all.
Occasionally disturbances occurred in the peripheries of the diverse nation, occasionally they were close to ‘home’, but I never once felt insecure or threatened. Metal detectors, body searches and supermarket guards with automatic weapons become everyday artifacts to your normal routine.
Various cricket nations, from the Caribbean to the South Pacific, led by their pampered millionaires felt the disinclination to visit Pakistan to play their obsessional game or entertain the populous of the 6th largest nation in the world.
When the Indian Premier league (and its illegitimate cousin, the ICL) offered huge salaries and slim dancing girls, the players ignored the bomb blasts in Bangalore, or the multiple explosions in the public markets of Jaipur or Ahmedabad or the public disturbances in Delhi and western Bengal.
Cricket Australia chose to take multimillions of US dollars for a hastily arranged Test and one day series in India that had not been any part of the future tours program ordained by the ruling body, the ICC.
The players found points of difference to their boycott of the tour and Champions Trophy in Pakistan. Cricket Australia and those very same players were widely accused of hypocrisy. Volumes of money being the catalyst for decision making, rather than empathy and duty.
Now we have the Mumbai ‘9/11’. Heinous, deadly, evil, irrational. Nothing particularly unusual in central Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan. Despite the blinkered views of westerners only one similar and much smaller incident ever happened in Pakistan, that being the Marriott blast which supposedly targeted the President and was the mission of a single person with a truck load of explosives.
This week’s attack has forced Cricket Australia and its partners in India to ‘postpone’ the new conceptual ‘Champions League’. Yep, that’s right POSTPONE!
Australians, and I mean Australian civilians who just happened to be in 5 star international hotels, have never been killed in Pakistan, they now have been in India. The money offered to the domestic cricket teams who were to participate in the Champions League was big, nay HUGE. What is the cost in dollar terms of risk taking in the sub-continent for cricket players?
There is no doubt that in the short term, say 6-9 months, the international cricket future tours calendar will be altered to accommodate the Champions League.
There is simply too much money at stake. Test matches will be postponed or cancelled for the new golden egg to be laid.
Lets see how the Indian Premier League scheduled for next April is effected by the Mumbai attacks.
Will players be reluctant to turn up for their hundreds of thousands? Hypocrisy will most likely win the day.
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