England in India 2008-09
November 28, 2008
The fate of England's Test tour to India lies in the hands of the players themselves, according to their captain, Kevin Pietersen, as the team prepares to fly home from the country in the wake of the terrorist atrocities that have rocked Mumbai over the past two days.
Officials from both England and India are adamant that the Test series will go ahead, particularly after the BCCI agreed to shift the second Test from Mumbai to Chennai on a request from the ECB. But according to Pietersen, the situation is not so cut-and-dried. If his team-mates have reservations about taking part, he will not be forcing them to re-join the tour.
"We need to make sure the security's right - but if it's not safe then we won't be coming back," Pietersen told Sky Sports. "People are their own people, I'll never force anyone to do anything or tell them to do anything against their will. On the field I may ask people to do things in a certain way but people run their own lives. We'll have to see how the security is."
Despite the postponement of the final two ODI fixtures in Guwahati and Delhi, England are still scheduled to take part in a planned warm-up match in Baroda on December 5-7, which effectively means that the players will have no more than five days to reach a concensus and return to the country. However, a senior BCCI official admitted that the Indian board is aware that the fate of the series now lies in the hands of the England players.
"Both the boards are in complete agreement on going ahead with the Test series," the official told Cricinfo. "But it seems the stand adopted by the England players will be crucial. At this point, I doubt whether even the ECB can confirm what their [players] position will be. The next few days will be important, but that issue is for the ECB to resolve. As far as the BCCI is concerned, there are absolutely no doubts about the Test series."
"We're going to London to re-evaluate the situation but the Test series is still in place," Hugh Morris, ECB managing director, said as England left Bhubaneswar for Bangalore to catch a connecting flight to London. "This is a tragic event and the players feel desperately sorry for all that are caught up in the events in Mumbai. They're very disturbed by it as we all are.
"To get back to a home environment will be a good thing," said Morris. "It's been an awful tragedy that this has happened in Mumbai and the players have felt very close to it because they have been in the hotel and in the rooms and the restaurant only a couple of weeks ago and getting back home for a few days will serve them well."
Sean Morris, the PCA chief executive, said any decision would be based on reports from the players' security advisors. "They will look at it in the cold light of day and ask, is it safe to return or not?" he was quoted as saying in the Daily Telegraph. "They will go with that advice assuming the situation in India does not deteriorate further. The players have full faith in Reg Dickason [England team security officer] and will be guided by him."
The content of that report will be eagerly awaited. A spokesman for AKE Group, a leading UK-based security firm, told Cricinfo that the level of risk faced by the England team "should not be overstated". He did, however, concede that the high-profile nature of the team, coupled with the fact that their itinerary is widely publicised, could be a justifiable cause for concern. "India is not Iraq, it is not a naturally hostile environment," said the spokesman. "But Britain is a front runner in the war on terror, and therefore an attack on one of their sporting teams would be high political capital, and a fair strike, so to speak."
In the opinion of Michael Vaughan, the former England captain, there is little chance of England feeling safe enough to return to India in the foreseeable future. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Vaughan - who has been in Bangalore with the England performance squad - told how he might well have been staying in the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai on the night of the attacks, had it not been for a late change of itinerary. He underlined the proximity of the attacks by pointing out that England's white kit for the Test series is all being stored in a room at the hotel, which was partially gutted by fire on Thursday morning.
"It's getting closer," Vaughan wrote. "I remember watching on TV a few weeks ago as the lorry-full of bombs went off at the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, where England were due to stay for the Champions Trophy, and thinking crikey, it's getting close. Now it's Mumbai, where the Middlesex players were due to stay on Thursday night. There seem to be these triggers, or warnings, that it is getting closer to cricket.
"I didn't think we were under threat in Bangalore," Vaughan continued, "and history to date says cricketers are safe. But our security man said we couldn't go in our England kit to the hotel where we eat 60 yards across the road from the stadium, and we'd have to go in cars, we couldn't walk. We were told we couldn't go to any of the hotels in Bangalore that westerners use."
Another former England captain, who preferred not to be named, told Cricinfo that he believed that the Test series would have to be postponed in the wake of the atrocities, although he predicted a tricky round of negotiations between the English and Indian boards before the matter could reach a conclusion. If previous political stand-offs were anything to go by, the two boards were likely to present conflicting security reports, with the players caught very much in the middle.
One significant voice in support of the tour, however, is Michael Atherton, another former captain, who wrote in his Times column that he intended to travel for the series unless the Foreign Office advice changed in the meantime. "While it may seem inappropriate to say so right now, I hope the Test series in two weeks' time can still go ahead," he wrote. "One thing is for sure, however: since 9/11, much of the fun and spontaneity of watching sport has disappeared beneath an avalanche of security requirements. Sadly, sport, long regarded as a playground for those who want to abscond from the grim realities of daily life, is no longer immune."
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