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November
27, 2008
The English team has decided to scrap the
remaining two ODIs of their tour due to the deadly terrorist
attacks in Mumbai which started on the night of 26th. The
English Cricket Board has confirmed that its players will be
leaving India for now but will review their chances of coming
back for the Test Series. Mumbai is also the venue for the
second test that and it is highly likely that the match would
be played at a different venue such as Bangalore.
It was perhaps the most dangerous terrorist
attacks that had happened in India. Terrorists had first
started to fire indiscriminately at people which started at
9:15 PM in a popular tourist restaurant called by the name
Leopold Cafe and the attacks were confirmed at the Chhatrapati
Shivaji Terminus Railway station, Taj Hotel and Trident Oberoi
at Nariman Point, the Santa Cruz domestic airport and also the
Cama and GT hospitals. The terrorists had also
hijacked a police van and had fired at even one of the few
journalists. The terrorists who were divided into groups then
had moved into three different places - a Jewish building by
the name Nariman House and the two hotels - Taj and the
Trident Oberoi. Already more than a hundred have been killed
in the attack along with more than 300 injured. The terrorists
now have plenty of hostages in all the three different places
which they have seized.
With such a large scale of terror happening
in India, it was inevitable that the English team had decided
to leave back home. They have been waiting still in Cuttack
instead of traveling to Guwahati for the sixth ODI. Infact
Guwahati in Assam had witnessed serial bomb blasts most
recently. Now depending on the events that take place in the
next few days in India, the English Board is likely to base
its decision of returning for the Tests or not.
Champions League postponed indefinitely
The inaugural Champions Twenty20 League has
been postponed indefinitely because of the ongoing terror
attacks in Mumbai. The tournament was scheduled to be played
from the 3rd to 11th in three different venues which also
included Mumbai. All the foreign teams have already expressed
genuine fear about coming to India for the tournament. What
was scaring was the fact that the Middlesex and the Victorian
teams were supposed to stay at the Taj where the terrorists
where there is a hostage crisis happening.
ICL World Series put off
The Indian Cricket League officials have
canceled their ongoing T20 World Series in wake of the Mumbai
terror attacks. The ICL tournament which has been filled with
loud music, cheer girls and all the entertainment activities
with cricket was obviously not the right kind of event to
happen considering the moods of the country. India has a lot
of repair work to do and cricket is rightly not in the high
priorities list at the moment.
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