The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and all those associated with Pak cricket can yell themselves hoarse that there was no security lapse and that security provided to the Sri Lankan cricket team was adequate, but the fact is that 6 cricketers were injured (miraculously not seriously), match officials feared for their lives and not one of the gunmen was caught or apprehended or even killed.
 
In the aftermath of Lahore, there are several tough questions confronting international cricket and indeed any sport in India. From the cricket news on the subject, in India while we do have an escort and a pilot for the team bus, however there is not the tradition of police deployment along the route. Perhaps this is something that needs to be looked at seriously; a lacuna to be plugged.

The Indian security agencies would do well to learn some valuable lessons from the Lahore attacks; after all forewarned is forearmed. So will it now mean that there will be police lining the road that leads from the hotel to the stadium? And does the Indian police service have the man power to spare for guarding sportspersons? These may be difficult questions to answer.

What is however an easier question to answer is cannot the Board for Cricket Control in India (BCCI) take over the security aspects of visiting and Indian cricket teams and players? The cash rich and powerful BCCI certainly has the resources to do this; the world’s richest cricket board can certainly afford to do that. This would mitigate the pressure put on central and state police reserves and would shore up and fortify the basic support that they would provide. While it may seem like a great idea for the sports ministry to have in place a security system which would cover top level sporting events, this may be neither feasible not affordable.

Now with the Indian Premier League, international cricket’s entertainment extravaganza less than a month away, security is one issue that would be at the top of the mind of the IPL officials as well as the individual franchisees for their teams and their players. Much has been written and discussed about this in the cricket news recently. They would do well to heed the Lessons learnt from Lahore and to implement them so that international cricket is not witness to the kind of shameful attack on sportspersons such as well all saw happening in Lahore.

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

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