If the return of the Sri Lankan cricketers to their families looked like the family reunions that usually happen between those involved in the service of the armed forces, Pakistan did not make it easy. Failed assurances and premeditated attacks never make a good recipe, especially for a conspiracy theory.
Two days after the terrorists struck at the very notion that sportsmen were somehow exempt from dastardly attacks, the cricketing fraternity that bore witness to the carnage are now raising questions, uncomfortable ones, as they try not to make sense of it but rather, find out who was behind it. The why is not even in question.
Match referee Chris Broad is willing to tow the line that perhaps some of Pakistan’s security forces were involved in Tuesday’s attacks outside the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore. His comments are in line with umpire Simon Taufel who found it hard to explain to himself why a reported convoy of twenty-twenty-five commandos set to accompany them had left to them to their own device in a van being constantly riddled with bullets. Broad was very scathing in his view as angry as Taufel and their contention was that the promised assurance of security felt very short of that expected.
While Mahela Jayawardene spoke about the fact that they were lucky to have got out of the situation alive, looking at him consoling his wife Christina upon the reunion, he appeared shaken and emotional from the experience. Another similar scene of that of Kumar Sangakkara consoling his pregnant wife, Yeheli. Even more traumatic for youngsters like Tarnaga Paranavitana who suffered a bullet wound close to his sternum and Thilan Samaraweera, who scored two double centuries in the Test series before it was horrifically brought to an end, who suffering a bullet injury in his left thigh. Also undergoing surgery to get rid of shrapnel were Sangakkara and Ajantha Mendis.
Muttiah Muralitharan relived the ordeal for the sake of hungry news men but also stated in no ambiguous terms that he believed that this was an “inside job”, that the route of the Sri Lankan bus was known before hand to the miscreants before unleashed madness.
Whether this was a case of undermining Pakistan, or cricket in the sub continent, or of the attempts to bring peace in the region, it looks chilling familiar to the case of a boy being denied his opportunity to play cricket in pursuit of more “serious pursuits” in the Kashmir valley, something Younis Khan stated he feared in the region could bring about more such horrific effects on young boys wielding guns.
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Everyone is shocked by this incident, but one thing we should try and understand is that postponing any cricketing event won’t be a rational idea as such.
realy want he return.
when will this kind of violence would stop? it just hard to find peace and this guys are playing for their countries and end their careers because of this. ah, imagine what people do to people.
