Era of safety guarantees is over
Peter English
25-Feb-2013
AFP
Greg Baum writes in the Age about how the rules have changed for terrorists and sports teams.
There is no Geneva Convention-style pact to cover sportsfolk on tour in dangerous places, but since the 1972 Munich Olympics there has been a kind of tacit understanding that terrorists would not target them, for fear of an even more severe backlash.
When Sri Lanka agreed to tour Pakistan in place of India, which had been ordered by its Government not to go after the bombings perpetrated by Islamist fundamentalists in Mumbai last November, this unspoken understanding was its only guarantee. No team had been to Pakistan for 14 months.
But, increasingly, terrorists have shown no respect for understandings, explicit or implicit. The attack in Lahore marks a turning point. Thankfully, no cricketer died or was seriously injured, though six security staff and two bystanders were killed. Nonetheless, from today, new understandings come into force.
Malcolm Conn says in the Australian the situation in Pakistan could have been avoided with more action from those who run the game.
If only many of the presidents and chairmen of the so-called 10 Test-playing countries who make up the ICC put people before politics, the game would not be in such an unholy mess. That it takes a tragedy of the proportions played out on the streets of Lahore, directly involving some of the game's finest players, should bring shame to those who refuse to put safety and security first.
In the Sydney Morning Herald Jamie Pandaram reports Australia were told before they cancelled last year’s tour that the team would be specifically targeted by terrorists.
Robert Craddock says in the Courier-Mail that what makes the incident more horrifying is that Sri Lanka are the Switzerland of Asian cricket.
Peter English is former Australasia editor of ESPNcricinfo