The survival of the game could be under threat if India as a venue gets excluded from international cricket, writes Pradeep Magazine in the Hindustan Times.
Unlike Pakistan, India is the hub of cricket, both in terms of its popularity and its financial health. If the game’s revenues have grown manifold and the players are earning more, it has a lot to do with India and its growing economic clout. Already the postponement of the Champions League is having a negative impact on state teams from Australia and South Africa. They and even their boards were hoping to make huge financial gains from the League, which is supposed to impact the future of cricket in a major way. If India loses its primacy in cricket’s pecking order due to the fear of terrorist strikes and if the economic meltdown further erodes the investments in the game, then cricket could be in serious danger of losing the kind of mind-boggling revenues it had started generating of late. It is because of these very reasons that foreign teams will think ten times before refusing to come and play here.
With diplomatic circles insinuating Pakistani involvement in Mumbai terror attacks, India's tour to the country looks in danger now, writes Dileep Premachandran in the Sunday Times.
If the tour is cancelled, the Indian board will do everything in its power to shoehorn the Champions League into the itinerary ... The possibility of financial losses is hardly India’s only concern, though. The BCCI is now the prime mover of world cricket. If these attacks keep teams away from India, it could severely weaken their grip.
In the same paper Simon Wilde believes if England return for the tour their stock with India will surge.
They will be in a position to extract favours from India — and Pakistan, who want cricket in Asia to be normalised as soon as possible, as they have staged almost no meaningful cricket for a year because of security problems.
In the Sunday Telegraph, Scyld Berry says that there are two objections to England's Test series going ahead in 11 days' time, and neither of them is security.
The first objection is a matter of public taste and decency. Yes, "the show must go on" – but only after a decent period of mourning.
...
The second major objection to the Test series going ahead as scheduled is the effect that 'India's 9/11' has had on the players of both countries
If England return to India this week, it will be a joyless affair, they will be going because they think they must. Therefore they should stay at home, says Stephen Brinkley in the Independent on Sunday
Also in the Sunday Times David Gower remembers captaining the England side on a 1984 tour of India where the team stayed on despite two high-profile assassinations.
As captain I toured the rooms at that same Taj Mahal Palace hotel and spoke to all the players, informing them that we were to carry on and would be going to the Wankhede stadium to practise, as arranged. Graeme Fowler, never one to miss a good line, said: “What? Target practice?” At a team meeting that evening it was clear that some of the players were not happy to stay. We had what they call a full and frank exchange of views and we all stayed, losing that first Test after a bright start but coming back to win the series 2-1.
In the Observer, Vic Marks writes that Abu Dhabi could be an alternative venue if the England players refuse to return to India for the Tests.
For the first time, an ongoing series has been cancelled in India; for the first time, a Test has been shunted out to another city for security reasons; a major tournament has also been indefinitely postponed and we just can't say when the world's top players will agree to come to Mumbai, if not India. Bobili Vijay Kumar in his column in the Times of India looks at sport in the times of terror.
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