McMillan's account of the Karachi blast
Craig McMillan's book Out of the Park was released last week and the New Zealand's Sunday News published an extract from the chapter on the bombings outside the team hotel in Karachi in 2002.
Nishi Narayanan
25-Feb-2013
Craig McMillan's book Out of the Park was released last week and the New Zealand's Sunday News published an extract from the chapter on the bombings outside the team hotel in Karachi in 2002.
My build-up to the first day of the second test, on May 8, 2002, started no differently from any other. We were staying at the Pearl Intercontinental Hotel, one of two hotels in central Karachi which were frequented largely by westerners. We had two buses that would take us to the ground, an early bus and a later bus. The early bus was always for Mark Richardson, who liked to go to the ground and have 1000 throw-downs before anyone turned up at the match venue. The rest of us, who liked to have more sleep, waited around for the later bus. The early bus was originally scheduled to leave at 7.45am and the second bus was set to leave at 8.15am.
It was about 7.45am and I was lying in bed thinking I would have to get out of bed soon and that getting ready was going to be a bit of a rush. I was struggling to get up that morning for some reason.
Five minutes later I was blown out of bed. I had been lying in bed and all of a sudden I was on the floor, with glass all around me. My first thought was that someone had let off a grenade on one of the floors of the hotel. I was lucky that I had my curtains pulled across the window. The blast, which was outside my window, blew all the glass in, which was then stopped by the curtains. It gave me a shield. My door was blown off its hinges and there was a haze of smoke hanging around.
Nishi Narayanan is a staff writer at ESPNcricinfo