Steve Harmison. Only England. A fast bowler who could audition for a role as the lion in Wizard of Oz. I know he has a young family. I know he doesn’t spout meaningless platitudes to the media. I know he is as infuriating a bowler as anyone could produce – on his day a beast, on his all-too-frequent offdays a berk. If India needed proof of our man’s resolution in the face of danger, here is his.
‘Being asked to go back is the last thing on my mind’ – Harmison
As I totally expected. Steve Harmison then goes into the usual defence that this is so much more than cricket etc. etc. etc. I was in that hotel just ten days ago, in that gym, in that corridor and so on. Steve, old son, I was in the guard post at the Consulate a couple of weeks before Al Qaeda came a calling in Istanbul, and met a fair number of people who were murdered, most of them, no, check that, all of them were bloody nice people. The guys in the security entrance wanted to talk about the Chelsea v Besiktas game and discuss the England game against Turkey that had just taken place. Good lads, drove me to the airport, chauffeured me about on my visit to the other area bombed, Levent, soon after. Indeed, I’d probably been in that building that was bombed, but five years before. As I’d said, and I know talk is cheap, I’d have gone back in a heartbeat. I was 200 yards away from the Docklands Bomb when it went off, so I know a smidgen, and only that, of terrorist atrocities.
KP isn’t absolved either. I wonder if he’ll look back and see the irony of his comments later on. Close to death? Oh do give over…
“Last night Pietersen said: “I’m still shaking from the terrorist atrocities in Bombay. Every time I see the TV footage of the carnage in the Indian city, I realise how close we were to death. I haven’t slept thinking about the three-day rampage and siege. We were 800 miles from the attack, but suddenly we felt very vulnerable, especially as we had stayed at the targeted Taj Mahal Hotel just two weeks ago. It makes my blood run cold.” However he indicated he would return if security experts said it was safe.”
Look, I’m being hard. I know. But there was a funny moment on the Sky coverage of the Australia v New Zealand game. New Zealand once went home from Karachi because a bomb went off in their hotel when they were there. I am sure I’d have been winging it out in the circumstances. I have no doubt many of the team were in shock. It is a world of difference from watching a horror in somewhere you’ve been. Jeremy Coney then said to Paul Allott “you’ve had a similar experience to this in India, haven’t you?” I am not a fan of Paul Allott, but he eloquently set out what happened in 1985 – they flew in when Indira Gandhi got shot and people rioted where they were. They were flown out to Sri Lanka for practice cricket, came back to Bombay, had a reception in the High Commission / Consulate, and the following day the Vice Consul, Percy Norris, was murdered. The players were extremely wary of continuing, but just did. And they won the series 2-1. Allott said he would liked to have come home, but the management put more pressure on them to stay.
Then Allott alluded to some of the players expressing their desire not to play, and how long it would need to be calm before they could return – is two weeks too soon? Is four months too soon? Jeremy Coney mentioned that some of the players wanted to play in the IPL, and in a brilliant silence just left it at that. Allott asked him what are you implying? Coney just raised his eyebrows. We’ll leave it there, Allott quickly closed…..
Indeed Jeremy, indeed. Will Flintoff, who in the press has said how much he’d like to play in the IPL for the good of his, and England’s game, and bank balance as well no doubt, now say that he puts his safety first like he is now? Will Kevin Pietersen risk playing in Mumbai and put his “safety” or bank balance first? As an England cricket fan I would be disgusted if they call this tour off, and then march out there in April to fill their wallets. If you call it off, and then not feather your nest, nor openly lobby for it if it is turned down, then you can walk tall. But I don’t understand how you can walk the streets of London (7 July) and not be scared, or visit New York (9/11) and not be scared, or go to Sri Lanka (numerous bombings and a country in civil war) and not be scared….
I’ll leave it to Michael Vaughan to say his piece – taken from cricinfo – in which he points out some truth, and maybe a more rational thought or two. No, Michael, safety can’t be guaranteed. But us plebs still get on tube trains and buses, despite them being targetted three years ago. I can’t say to my boss, my safety is paramount, and because people drive dreadfully on the A2, I’m not prepared to come to work. Or if some nutter decided to blow up the Blackwall Tunnel, I would refuse to come in. None of us would leave the most dangerous place of all, the most likely place you are to end up being killed, at home. Life is a risk.
“All the lads will be desperate to play cricket for their country, but they will want to have their safety guaranteed and the trouble with this sort of attack is that safety cannot be guaranteed, even if they are given presidential security,” Vaughan told the Sunday Telegraph.
“We have a duty to go and play cricket if it is safe to do so, but if the players have fear, they can’t go out there and perform. There are a lot of young players in this England squad who are new to this sort of thing. Can they focus and concentrate on cricket so soon afterwards? Any slightly negative mentality and they will get found out.
“If the Middlesex players had been involved … if they had checked into the Taj hotel 24 hours earlier … and if some of their guys had been held hostage, would this Test series be going ahead? Almost certainly not.”
As for Vaughan himself, he said he would “find it very difficult to go back, having been there and watched the scenes on TV – scenes of gunmen shooting people and corpses being dragged out of a hotel where the England team were staying a fortnight ago and where they were due to be staying in just over a fortnight”.
And he warned that even if the tour was to resume, it would “become like a military camp”.
“Above all, there has to be a period of mourning, and I think that less than a fortnight is not long enough.”
Kevin Garside in the Telegraph nails it. In my view. Mike Atherton, as always, is the voice of reason and elqouence.
One set of people have been quiet. What do the Indian cricketers think?
