The need of the hour is not to procrastinate, but to take command of the situation, and there is no other institution better equipped than ICC to do it.

When the time of reckoning has come ICC needs to rise to the occasion. An action initiated would prove to the world that ICC is fit to govern international cricket. The need of the hour is to accept the inevitable consequences of the terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka team in Lahore and take a firm decision to announce categorically that all international cricket in Pakistan be suspended until further notice.

Another action that would stamp its authority would be to take an immediate and irrevocable decision that Pakistan has been removed as a co-host of the 2011 World Cup. It would be a regrettable decision, but the consequences of inaction would be far more damaging.

One has to accept that the threat of terrorism is part of cricket’s everyday fabric. There are teams like England and Sri Lanka who by their acts have demonstrated that they hold the cause of cricket above all so England stoutly returned to India in defiance of the Mumbai terrorist atrocities. While right now the team Sri Lanka may be in tatters, psychologically they would draw the strength from the fact that they belong to a country where terrorism is a walk of life and life has to carry on with the game.

The situation in Pakistan however is different as here the attack has been pre-planned and pre-meditated. It was manifest from the manner in which the terrorists were moving around, as buddies, akin to the manner in which the commandos move during an operation. The cricketers were targeted with a deliberate intent. Earlier thy used to be caught in a situation in an indirect manner, but for the first time in Lahore, they have been the target. The bon homie in the cricketing world is gone, and Pakistan would always be viewed with great suspicion.

While ICC may push out cricket of Pakistan for the time being, it need not abandon it altogether, and could explore the possibility of carrying it out in the Middle East to at least offer it some sort of future. A one-day series against Australia has already been scheduled for Dubai and Abu Dhabi next month and others will follow. It is the only solution that offers the prospect of certainty and stability — perhaps even survival — in the years ahead.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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