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ShareMumbai: Till Tuesday, 'tis not cricket' had a connotation quite different from what it might be in the future.
The assassination of 11 Israelis by Palestinians in the Munich Olympic Village in 1972 remains the most dastardly act of violence in modern sports history. But Tuesday's terrorist attack by a dozen armed gunmen on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore is no less diabolical even if there have been fewer casualties, and no player has died.
In the event, seven policemen were killed, five players, a coach and an umpire were injured, which will have serious ramifications for sport in the sub-continent.
At the very least, it makes a cricket tour of Pakistan by any team in the short-to-medium term untenable, which, in turn, threatens the very future of the sport.
If no country is willing to go to Pakistan, it seems unlikely that any country will host a Pakistan team either. With only 10 full members (those which qualify to play test matches), and of which two -- Zimbabwe and Bangladesh -- are already marginalised, the sport shrinks dramatically if Pakistan cricket is isolated, even for no fault of its own.
The high-profile Indian Premier League, scheduled to begin in mid-April, is another event which could take a beating, albeit for an oblique reason. With general elections in India to be held concurrently with the IPL, there might not be enough security cover available for cricket, as the home ministry has indicated.
A shift in schedule could become a logistical nightmare. Moreover, the League stands weakened for players: several Australians had already pulled out, and the participation of the frontline Sri Lankans, now traumatised -- physically or psychologically -- is also now in doubt.
(IPL chief Lalit Modi later said said dates for matches would not coincide with the voting dates.)
The grimmest outcome for cricket, of course, could be the future of the 2011 World Cup, which was to be jointly hosted by India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
With players and governments from across the cricket world ranged against playing in Pakistan, the World Cup itinerary may have to be restructured, with Pakistan now out of the scheme of things.
This might be irksome to the Board of Control for Cricket in India, which has leaned so heavily on the Pakistan Cricket Board for votes to establish its near-hegemony. But in the current context, the BCCI may be left with no choice in the matter.
Intelligence reports coupled with popular sentiment are likely to compel the Indian government to take a stand, as it did regarding the tour which was scrapped late last year.
In all fairness, the entire sub-continent has been volatile in recent years: the LTTE problem has revisited Sri Lanka, Bangladesh is grappling with a mutiny of sorts, and India has barely recovered from 26/11. But more than any other, Pakistan has been viewed as a fragile state waiting to implode by the international community.
There was always the threat to a high-visibility event like a cricket tour and it is a moot point whether Tuesday's attack was not, in fact, intended for the Indian team had it toured Pakistan as originally scheduled, though it must be argued that the security arrangements then would have been drastically different.
Indeed, there is bitter irony in the fact that the Sri Lankans, who had tried to help out Pakistani cricket by becoming the first overseas team to tour there in 14 months, should have been the target of this terror attack.
That in itself manifests the incoherent nature of contemporary terrorism where innocent people are killed just like that, as happened during 26/11 in Mumbai. The utter mindlessness of Tuesday's act will have left the global anti-terror protagonists even more bewildered, and the international sports fraternity, especially cricket, bedevilled.
