Cricket, cricket everywhere but no match to be played in Pakistan

Although our guest team was saved due to the bravery of some police officials and the driver of the bus carrying the Sri Lankan team, yet Pakistan cricket and our national pride and reputation died in this attack

By Pervez Sajjad
Human nature is like water. It adopts the shape of the circumstances in which it is reacting. You are going on a road and a bomb blast occurs in which people die but you are safe so for you that place is a safe place. A terrorist attack takes place but you are not touched. For you that is a safe place. In short, it is only when you are touched, when you are involved, that we start feeling the gravity of the situation.
Pakistan cricket was under the threat of terrorist attacks for a long time and that threat which we all thought would never has become a reality, did become a reality at 8.47 am on March 3 when our guest team, Sri Lanka, while going to the Stadium, to start the third day of the second and last Test match against Pakistan, were attacked by terrorists with Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers and hand grenades.
I do not know whether I should call ourselves lucky or unlucky, because, although our guest team was saved due to the bravery of some police officials and the driver of the bus carrying the Sri Lankan team, yet Pakistan cricket and our national pride and reputation died in this attack. On this day cricket of Pakistan remained no more a game but became a part of the politics par force.
Terrorism is not new to the World. It was used always for political purposes and one finds its traces way back around the time of Christ when a Jewish group, the Zealots-Sicarii, remained active for twenty five years to achieve their political goals leaving a profound effect on Jewish history.
The second most significant group was the Assassins, who, whenever the need arose, were used by the political powers to kill or maim their opponents. The rest of the terrorism movements were more or less based on these two fundamental models. The terrorist attacks are aimed at achieving political ends by intimidating the non-combatants by any means and they do it without any emotion or sensitivity.
The idea to give a background of terrorism is just to show that in spite of the ever existing terrorism, life always continued to progress and prosper because there were always some determined elements to combat it, to fight selflessly in order to restore peace and bring back tranquillity to the lives of people of no consequence, people for whom the game of power is an elusive game and that's why they want cricket to flourish and prosper in the country because they can associate themselves with this game because it is a concrete reality and hence achievable; they can associate themselves with its players and make them their real heroes because they know that these players play with the truthful sound of the bat and pureness of the speed of the ball.
Today, we, the people of no consequence, must get together, rise and salute them who are fighting the war against terrorism, outside and inside equally, who are laying their lives so that we can live peacefully and who do not hesitate to take away the smiles from the faces of their families so that we can smile.
In the end, I, very humbly, would like to address our august Committee on Sports of the Senate that cricket standards are not deteriorating because PCB is not doing its job correctly, but it is deteriorating because some others are not doing what they are supposed to do, which is effecting not only cricket but the nation on the whole. So please turn around and ask them to explain.
I am sure that cricket will return to Pakistan. When? Well, anybody's guess!