Stani Army

With the Chairmen of the two boards of Australia and Pakistan set to hold talks later this week, it looks like Australia’s cancellation of its tour to Pakistan will finally be confirmed. It would be surprising if the two sides agree to proceed with a shortened version of the tour as this doesn’t really change anything as it would still mean that the Aussies are spending a considerable period of time (30 days) in a country they obviously don’t want to be in.

The disappointing thing is that when an issue like this is highlighted it is brought into the public eye and more attention, including that of those who would want to stop it, is focused onto it. Maybe the boards and the players, the Australians in particular, should have kept quiet and had discussions behind closed doors whilst coming to a decision instead of attracting so much media attention. South Africa and Zimbabwe toured Pakistan and no terrorist was probably any the wiser – not that they’d care about cricket anyway. Yet we had players, of whom Andrew Symonds was most outspoken, come out and continuously make statements when nothing had even been decided upon. It’s all well and good knocking over streakers Andrew but why don’t you come over to Pakistan and show us how hard you really are.

With the security assurances and the fact that South Africa, Australia-A and Zimbabwe toured without a problem, does Cricket Australia have a genuine reason for pulling out of the tour? If they do pull out then it will be interesting to see whether Pakistan do like-wise and boycott their tour of Australia in November 2009. They could always cite a fear of naked men running on the pitch as a reason as I’m sure the Pakistan players would not want to get as close as Andrew Symonds wanted to.

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