The “should England play in India” debate

Spare a thought for poor Reeky Punting. No sooner has Australia handed the Gavaskar-Border trophy over to Argy-Bhaji, MSD, Sachin and the lads than terrorists cause an outrage in Mumbai. Just imagine. A couple of weeks earlier and he and the Australian team would have been able to hightail it out of there claiming a draw.

Non-Asian teams have a pretty poor record when it comes to turning up to play on the sub-continent. Wickman can’t recall the last time an Australian team played a test series in Pakistan or Sri Lanka. Actually it was March 2004 when the Aussies last played a game in Sri Lanka. Where the Barmy Army see beautiful beaches and the old world charm of the fort at Galle your average Aussie sees a terrorist in every palm tree. Wickman would have to check but he can’t remember the last time a series was played in Pakistan by anyone (no one turns up to watch Test cricket there anyway) apart from India or Bangladesh.

With the growing number of outrages being perpetrated in India, could it soon become, like Pakistan, a no-go for nervous non sub continentals? There’s a huge amount of hokum being written in the papers about whether England should go back to India to start the ludicrously short Test series. Today, Michael Atherton, who writes for the paper that Wickman takes, suggested that England have become paranoid about the threat against them. He says that there’s no history of terrorists targeting cricket in the sub continent so the lads should be all right. Wickman paraphrases it but you get the picture.

What a load of complete tripe Michael. Wickman reckons the fellas that took out 200ish people in Mumbai last week weren’t committed cricket fans who decided to get on with it because there was a lull in Test cricket. Wickman doesn’t think that they chose that particular week to get on with it because they knew the England team would be safely ensconced up North along with the Indian side. Wickman doesn’t think they asked all the people they murdered whether they had played international cricket before they murdered them.

Surely the only issue should be whether some people who play cricket for a living feel safe going to India after having seen a massacre occur in a hotel they had all stayed at. Wickman can’t think of many businesses that would insist on their employees travelling somewhere they didn’t’ want to go to. Why would the ECB? Pontificating now about whether the England boys should get on the plane is a bit rich – even if Michael would be going on the same tour to write about it.