Why cricket diplomacy works

Should India tour Pakistan or not? Pakistan may still be at the receiving end of the blame game after the atrocities in Mumbai, but it doesn't necessarily mean that India should snap cricketing ties with them in haste, writes Dileep Premachandran, in the Guardian.

Does the cancellation of a cricket tour make the jihadis go away, or does it merely strengthen the hawks on both sides? What does the average Pakistani have to do with Lashkar-e-Taiba or the Taliban? About as much as the normal Indian has to do with lunatic right-wing groups like the Bajrang Dal. Nothing at all.

He also justifies why Pakistan isn't as dangerous as people think it to be.

I've been kicked in the ribs with Doc Martens as a child growing up in England, been treated like vermin by a thuggish Croatian restaurant owner in fashionable St Kilda in Melbourne and nearly mugged in Johannesburg. Pakistan is the one place I have no bad memories of.