大象传媒

I've just watched Jayawardene interviewed on his return to Sri Lanka (.

鈥渢he whole team is in a good mood. You know, nothing bad happened鈥�.

Seven people are dead, Mahela. Seven. Dead. It's not all about cricket! Crikey...

Badger, I think you can give Mahela a bit of leeway if his words sound odd. In the last 24 hours, he's gone from preparing to lead his team out for his final Test as captain to sheltering in a bus whilst being shot at, seeing members of his team take bullets and shrapnel in their body, being evacuated on a military helicopter and then leaving the country. I doubt the guy has slept much at all. His immediate concerns are his own side, and understandably so.

I do think as captain Mahela needed to be a bit more thoughtful about his words, its part of the duty of a captain to be able to handle the media side even under such stressful conditions.

Put it this way, I think if seven Sri Lankans had died, cricketers or bus drivers, he wouldn't forget to mention them.

he said what a human being probably will say.
I dont think that there is anything wrong with what he said.we r just talkign and this man and his mates have been through a lot.And then talking about doing his job again and representing his country.

This is a sad thing that has happened and i hope international cricket in other countries, specially in parts of sub-continent dnt suffer much

@BringontheBadger - 10:46 - please give Mr Jayawardene a break!! I'll agree with AndyPlowright on this one (again).

The Sri Lankan players (and others involved in this horror) need time to reconnect with their loved ones after a truly awful day, when as you rightly point out, innocent lives have been lost.

Cricket as a pastime is dying. Cricket as a sport has changed forever.

This is an absolutely horrible event, not only for cricket, but for society. Nothing is safe, nothing can be fully protected, nothing is "out of bounds." One always feels that if you stop doing something that one has normally done for years than it is a victory for the terrorists. However, as Chris Broad and others witnessed, discretion may very well be the better part of valor. International cricket has to take a pause from play in Pakistan. Attacking the Sri Lankan side only proves that the terrorists thinks nothing of anything but their own agenda. I never heard of the FA Cup, or the Super Bowl or Stanley Cup being the targets for terrorist attack, but now we must consider it. The World Cups in football, baseball (The WCC) and ruby (both codes) must consider themselves actual as well as potential targets. What next, the Soap Box Derby?

Third-Ronaldo - there's a limit to where stressful conditions go above and beyond his duty and this is it. I think he can be forgiven.

Correction--In my previous post, line 4 word 8 should read "then." Line 11, final word should be spelled rugby.

Re Badger #1:
Oh come on! I went to watch the report and did not come away with the impression that Mahela was in any way minimizing the loss of life of the police officers. He was quite clearly speaking about the SL team when he said everything was ok (probably a response to a direct question about the team's mental state). I don't get the sense that he was talking about the events in the larger context.

"Lahore attacks shock England players"

This is a STORY? A bit like "Next week to have seven days in it" or "Bears prefer woods for defecation"

Of course, like any sentient being, the England players are shocked by the attacks. But neither the headline nor the story adds anything to what we know or could assume. Just blogging Diarrhoea . Take an Imodium Adam if you haven't any real stores to tell...

Those above bashing Mahela for his comments, what is wrong with you? It seems that had the gunmen succeeded in killing their driver, there would not be a Sri Lankan cricket XI at this moment in time. He is lucky to still even be alive along with many of his closest friends and colleagues.

The headline, to my mind, also links back to the outrage from some quarters when the England cricket team left India after the Mumbai attacks. It was said then, that cricketers would not be targetted, well I think that has been proved wrong, and let us bear in mind this, why Sri Lanka? If they were targetting Americans and Britons during those attacks, and now they shoot at the Sri Lankan team, who knows what they may have tried against an England tour bus and their entourage and fans.

Some of you need to put things into perspective and not nit-pick each single word spoken by a man who was seconds from being shot along with many friends far from home, gets evacuated back home to the emotion of being back with his family, and don't just pick one sentence in isolation - worse than tabloid journalism.

@10.

If the headline of this piece was, to you, a patently obvious statement, why read on and waste your time making nasty remarks? I've never understood people who do this, unless they get their rocks off from being spiteful??

As for Jayawardene, I couldn't predict with any certainty what I may say if I'd faced what he faced. The incident was a very sad day for cricket, I do hope the usual 'don't let the terrorists win' platitudes aren't trotted out.

Fundamentally, everywhere in the World is under threat from radical elements, but a few are more under threat than others; the trick will be separating out those few. I agree that we cannot be cowed by the threats - but there is a difference between courage and foolhardiness.

Adam - good piece from someone on the spot.


Pam Nash.

Post 1 (bringonthebadger) - your comment takes him entirely out of context - you are like a tabloid editor - i think you just listended to the first 10 seconds of the interview.

Pakistan should NEVER stage international cricket ever again. I do not say this lightly but with enough evidence to make clear that over the years it has been the Pakistan government who has funded and aided terrorism. Now it is reaping the results of the seeds they sowed themselves. After hearing Chris Broads press conference it was crystal clear that the PCB and the Pakistan government did not offer adequate security to the officials and players and now no-one can ever trust Pakistan to offer that security again. One has to remember that this was done in broad daylight so there can be no excuses. Police have lost their lives but the number of police officers and security forces was wholly inadequate. At least is India it was visible when England went back that there was enough security to defend the Prime Minister and President let alone the England cricket. In contrast in Pakistan the security wasn't even fit for a lay person and this wholly rests with the government and PCB.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

@ patliputrai think the terrorist attack in Lahore is carried out by the combine enemy of pakistan and srilanka. the one who is involed in the terrorists activities in tribal areas in pakistan and also supports the Tamil Tigers in srilanka aswell? and who thinks that he is the superpower of subcontinent. ?

I wonder what would have happened if the terrorists had killed the whole Sri Lankan cricket team?
Also the Indian cricket team were supposed to tour Pakistan.If the Indians had all died there would have been a war between India & Pakistan.
The Pakistanis should have provided armoured security.Instead they sent the cricketers in a ordinary bus.
Also they should have had security on the road to the stadium.The terrorists calming walked after the killing. There was no military to stop them
Pakistan should be banned from having cricket matches in Pakistan
They can play matches in Dubai or other gulf countries.

It is a shame that the Srilankan cricket team were actually political pawns. A result of the poor leadership of the fragile government in that country.

India pulled out of their game because of the securtiy scare. A few other countries showed reservation of playing there at all before this.

When India pulled out the Srilankan government sent the players to flatter the Pakistani government who have been supplying the Srilankan government with weapons.

I feel the government of Srilanka is much to blame for putting these sportsmen and women at great risk.

There is here a much bigger picture than just terrorism.

#18, AttackStar... precisely! You're on the ball there. There's the cricketing bubble, where we're all happy that the Sri Lankans are safe and sound, and we worry about the future of the game in Pakistan, and as cricket fans, we discuss this, but outside the bubble, there's a Real World going on. There's clearly an extremely tangled web of history, politics, war, crime, money, shady people, religion, sociology, and a hundred other things going on in S Asia, beyond the understanding of the average cricket fan. The Lankans were put in an awful situation, and thank goodness they escaped, but to suggest that it was a random act of terrorist hatred is as naive as it is dangerous. Similarly, the idea that the Lankans went to Pakistan as friendly neighbours helping out a suffering ally is almost certainly twee naivety; who knows what strings were pulled between the impoverished Pak and SL boards, and possibly governments, without regard to player safety etc.? We can talk about cricket all we want, but we have to respect that in this case, cricket and the people involved were just caught up in a deeper, endemic problem. We shouldn't nitpick the comments of Mr. Broad, Mr. Taufel, Mr. Muralidaran etc; they're scratching angrily at the surface of what goes beyond an unfortunate isolated incident. It's terrible that people were put in danger, people died, but this happened in a world where Javed Miandad can argue for the continuation of cricket in Pakistan while neglecting to mention the wanted international criminal and terrorist in his own family. Better security won't fix Pakistan's problems, or India's, or anyone's.

Over the last few days it has become clear that the lessons from this dreadful incidence is not going to be heeded either by the PCB or the Pakistani government.
Chris Broad and the rest of the officials have all made valid comments suggesting that the security they were offered was inadequate.
I agree that 5 poilce officers lost their lives, but in the end none of the perpetrators of this act were caught. Where did the rest of the police disappear to? And why did they leave the officials as 'sitting ducks'?
These are the questions that needed to be answered and not statements made in the media by the PCB and former Pakistani cricketers (Javed Miandad, Aamer Sohail) that Chris Broad is lying. It is plain for everyone to see from the video footage that indeed the security was extremely lax and inadequate, and also the officials had been left to fend for themselves. The honesty and the dignity by which the officials have made their statements can only be applauded, however the converse is true of the Pakistani government and the PCB. They are being made to look extremely petty and stupid with their jibes at Chris Broad and it just goes to show that they cannot be trusted on the security issue ever. It is a sheer miracle that the Chris Broad and the umpires actually survived, and this can only be said that it was written for them to stay and alive and tell of their ordeal.
The one thing that has been made clear by the PCB's and the former Pakistani cricketers comments, is that they cannot be trusted with anyones security let alone players or officials .This just confirms my previous point that international cricket should never return to Pakistan while there are people like this in charge. It is wholly dispicable but typical of the whole official Pakistani attitude to these tragic events.

I heard Chris Broad's comments about the security provided to the Sri Lankan team in Pakistan. The attack was horrific, and it goes to show how dangerous the situation is in that country.

But for Broad to say that there were no policeman around when six of them had just been shot dead is an amazingly insensitive and unacceptable remark to make. I never once heard him express thanks or sympathy to the policemen who had died defending him. Rather than making those remarks, he should have been thanking the stars he was still alive. I think Javed Miandad was right in suggesting that Broad needs to be taken to task by the ICC.

No# 20 - patliputra

You got it spot on :o)

I was waiting for someone to back up Chris Broad.

Cheers,

WD7

In case you weren't aware, Adam, there is a test match going on in Trinidad at the moment. We're going into day 5 now. If you are aware that it is taking place, can I assume from the complete absence of new 大象传媒 blogs that you assume that nothing has happened there in the past 4 days that is worthy of inviting any discussion from people viewing this site. If not, please offer a better explanation for the complete lack of coverage on this site.

I never cease to be amazed by the outright rudeness and unnecessary sarcasm of some of the posters on these blogs; one can only hope that they do not address people in the same way face to face.

Demanding explanations, well, as my Grandpa used to say, 'He that expecteth never receiveth'!

A bit of politeness would go a long way, lisacat1999. ;)

Patliputra, since you are advocating no international cricket in Pakistan because of the attack on the Sri Lankan team, I assume that you will also advocate no overseas visitors, sportspeople or otherwise, to either India or Sri Lanka because of the frequency of terror incidents in those countries. Such an approach would badly hit the pockets of all those Australian and English cricketers who are lining up to play in India and I doubt they would agree to this.

I'm sure this is the wrong place for my comments but having been advised to make my feelings known to Adam Mountford re TMS via the blog - I've struggled (as a blog virgin)to know how to do it! so here goes:
please oh please think twice about having Simon hughes commentating. We
need someone that paints pictures , that makes you feel as if you're
there - not someone just monotonously droning through, more intersted
with putting down the experts than looking after the listener.
PLEASE. There aren't many things that make me turn to sky instead of bbc
tms - but he's one!