The game is now not immune to terror, one can only hope the IPL is not next on the list.
For a long time, terror had been reluctant to haunt sport for the fear that the sympathy for terrorists that lurks among the populace would diminish. The most shocking so far was the slaying of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
Cricket, one thought, was so popular, including among the criminally-inclined and the betting folk, that it would be immune to terror attacks. There were brushes with terror in the past: In 2005, three days before a one-day international against Australia at Lord’s, terrorists bombed the London Underground and a bus; there had been bomb blasts near team hotels and close to cricketers in Pakistan and Sri Lanka; the Mumbai terror attacks caused the England team to return home. But cricketers were never directly targeted as they were in Lahore on Wednesday.
The 15 minutes during which 14 armed men peppered the Sri Lankan team bus with grenades, AK47s and rocket launchers have wounded cricket grievously, casting a shadow on its fledgling breadwinner, the Indian Premier League.
Sri Lanka had gone to Pakistan to fill the breach created by India’s pullout. It was a brave gesture, one that epitomised touching sub-continental solidarity. A successful and peaceful tour would have showed the Australians and the others in the White World that their fears were unfounded. That cricket was too popular to be targeted. The attack has achieved the opposite.
In a way, cricket is paying the price of its popularity in South and West Asia, which is a hotbed of religious and ethnic strife and which has come to be seen as a breeding ground for all things sinister and suspicious.
The game would have stayed safe and insulated had it remained England’s indulgence, the former colonist’s way to keep alive a little corner of the world where it would still wield influence over the former colonies. But the advent of one-day cricket took it to the masses and shifted the power centre to Asia, a shift that is getting accentuated by the Twenty20 format.
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Secondly, cricket has always flirted with those on the border — and beyond — of what we call legal and civil. It was not too long ago that all manners of faces, adorned with glittering sunglasses, were spotted in the most expensive stands when Sharjah created a little oasis of cricket. Some of the most influential cricketers did not mind jumping in bed with bookies and match-fixers. The Gulberg shootings have showed how quickly the game can change.
Cricket in Sharjah is dead. The Gulberg attack pretty much puts an end to international cricket in Pakistan, which was hosting its first Test in 14 months. A disruption of IPL caused by terror is a terrifying prospect.