Should the New Zealand cricket team have been in Pakistan?

By ANDREW LAXON and AGENCIES

Even before the bomb went off, it was the tour from hell. At the end of a long, gruelling summer against Australia, South Africa and England, the New Zealand cricketers limped into Pakistan, dogged by injuries and dreading the prospect of searing heat, local food and Shoaib Akhtar bowling at 160km/h.

Their worst fears about the tour - rescheduled to the hottest part of the year after September 11 security concerns scuttled the original October timetable - were realised.

They were thrashed 3-0 in the one-day series, unable to cope with the 40C temperatures despite the air-conditioners and ice-filled tubs in their dressing rooms.

Star batsman Nathan Astle went home with a torn knee tendon. At one point the team, already missing frontline bowlers Chris Cairns, Shane Bond and Dion Nash, considered bringing back spinner Daniel Vettori, who was resting a back injury.

Most players who weren't injured had stomach problems. An ashen-faced Chris Harris scrapped his way to 37 in the third game, and Craig McMillan, who scored 105 in a vain attempt to save the second, drank seven litres of water and couldn't sit down for fear of cramp afterwards.

"It's suffocating," said captain Stephen Fleming last week, as the New Zealanders braced for hotter weather with 10am starts in the tests.

"It just doesn't go anywhere and as soon as you go for a run you just can't get the air in."

Clever pre-match tactical talk about bringing bowlers off the field for "treatment" (ice jackets and litres of water in the cool dressing room) proved useless.

The team suffered a humiliating defeat by an innings and 324 runs, the worst by any New Zealand side and the fifth worst by any team.

Pakistan's playmaker Inzamam-ul-Haq ripped the New Zealand attack apart for 329, before Akhtar reduced the batsmen to quivering wrecks, taking six wickets for 11 runs.

The team's run of bad luck continued after the first test. This week all-rounder Andre Adams came home for three months' rest with a back injury.

Three nights ago a motorbike travelling without lights ploughed into a car, just missing coach Denis Aberhart, who watched from the front passenger seat as the rider flew across the bonnet.

On Wednesday morning, three weeks into the tour no one really wanted, the team knew they faced another gruelling, potentially horrendous day as the second test began in Karachi.

At 7.45am local time (1.45pm NZ time) physiotherapist Dayle Shackel was sitting on a bus outside the Pearl Continental hotel in Karachi's wealthy southern suburbs, waiting for half the team to join him for the trip to the match venue.

The others were to take a second bus at 8.15am. Some, such as Fleming, were having breakfast, some were in their rooms. Opening batsman Mark Richardson was sitting on the toilet, thinking about another day of Akhtar's deliveries.

Across the road at the Sheraton, television commentator and former fast bowler Danny Morrison was in his underpants, doing sit-ups. Robbie Hart had just walked back into his room when the tour lurched from unhappiness to tragedy.

Across the road a suicide bomber in a car packed with explosives drove into a Pakistan Navy bus full of French engineers who were helping to build two submarines.

The blast killed 14 people - 11 French, two Pakistanis and the unknown bomber - reduced the bus to a blackened skeleton and scattered body parts across the street.

Shackel, who had just taken his seat in the bus and opened the curtains, was thrown to the floor but escaped with only a cut elbow.

Almost every window at the Pearl Continental and the Sheraton was shattered. Hart, the team's wicketkeeper, threw himself to the floor and rolled like a commando to dodge the flying glass. Richardson found himself face down on the bathroom floor.

In Christchurch, New Zealand Cricket chief executive and ex-test bowler Martin Snedden was driving home from a funeral when he heard the news.

He rushed to his office, turned on the radio and heard the team were all safe. Then he started to worry about his old teammate Morrison, before learning he, too, was unharmed.

Snedden talked to team manager Jeff Crowe. Within half an hour they had decided to call off the tour and get the players out of Karachi.

The team, who had gathered by the hotel pool with their Pakistani opponents after making hurried calls to families from the Sheraton carpark, could barely suppress their smiles of relief.

Yesterday, the players had reached Singapore and are due in Auckland this morning.

As the cricketers observed, the bomb blast put sporting concerns into perspective.

"We were five minutes away from that early bus going out that gate, then you would have been talking about half a team missing," said Fleming.

"You don't want to think that, but that's how close it was."

Islamic extremists have been blamed for the attack. New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade warned against any non-essential travel to Pakistan.

No one has claimed responsibility for the explosion but early speculation points towards Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf, linked the killings to his stand - fiercely opposed by Islamic militants - against international terrorism.

Many have worked closely with the Taleban regime in neighbouring Afghanistan, which sheltered bin Laden.

Most observers, including Pakistani diplomats and New Zealand Cricket, believe the bomb was aimed at the French naval engineers, not the New Zealand or Pakistan teams.

But Pakistani media say it is possible the cricketers were targeted. The country's biggest newspaper group, Jang, quoted police investigators and analysts on its website as saying al Qaeda terrorists may have struck the French engineers by mistake when they were really aiming at the New Zealand team bus.

For New Zealand and world cricket, difficult questions remain.

When will it be safe for cricket teams to go back to Pakistan - and possibly to India and Sri Lanka, which have their own problems with factional fighting? What happens to the rest of the tour and the fledging world test championship, thrown into disarray by the cancellation decision? And should New Zealand have even agreed to go to Pakistan in the first place?

So far Australia, which is due to tour Pakistan in August, says its plans are under review.

Australian Cricket Board chief executive James Sutherland said in Sydney yesterday that the situation in Pakistan was "clearly quite fluid" but the safety of players and team management was the highest priority.

Pakistan Cricket Board director Brigadier Munawwar Rana thanked Australia for holding off and begged the rest of the cricketing world to give his country some time.

Pakistan has already been forced by the West Indies to play a February series in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates because of security concerns. Its old rival India has stopped all games because the two countries are at loggerheads over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Questions have been raised about tours to the whole Indian subcontinent, especially since bombings have wrecked New Zealand cricket tours there before.

In 1987, a tour of Sri Lanka was abandoned after one test when a bomb killed 100 people in Colombo.

In 1992, the team were divided over whether to stay after a suicide bomber killed a Sri Lankan Navy officer outside their hotel. In the end, coach Warren Lees and five players came home but the rest of the team - with extra players from New Zealand - carried on.

But international cricket's security problems are not limited to India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Australia has called off its tour of Zimbabwe because of political unrest.

Snedden refused yesterday to write Pakistan off as a venue and said he was reluctant to speculate about what might happen in India and Sri Lanka.

International Cricket Council chief executive Malcolm Speed says it will try to reschedule the lost second test against New Zealand, as well as the Australian test series and a one-day triangular series between Pakistan, Australia and New Zealand if necessary.

As for the argument that New Zealand should not have gone in the first place, Snedden says full security precautions were taken.

An advance party, led by Jeff Crowe, checked Pakistan's claims that it had improved security, and came away satisfied.

New Zealand was considering as late as February whether it should go ahead with the tour - prompting a threat from the Asian Cricket Council to cancel India's tour of New Zealand in November if the Black Caps pulled out.

The stand-off led to speculation that New Zealand had to make the tour because it would have been fined $4.51 million if it did not.

Under new International Cricket Council guidelines, the fine can be imposed if one country cancels a tour without good reason.

But Snedden says this is not relevant to New Zealand's visit given the unstable climate in Pakistan.

"The ICC's future tours programme does allow for a country to cancel in a case of force majeure [unforseeable circumstances], so in that regard we were never in danger of incurring a penalty for not going."