Bangladesh’s hopes of hosting cricket tours sure to be harmed by Gulshan terror attack

Dileep Premachandran on the Gulshan terror attacks and how it is sure to have an adverse affect on Bangladesh's ability to host international cricket tours.

Mushfiqur Rahim, left, and his Bangladesh teammates are scheduled to face England in September, although the terror attack in Gulshan has put those plans in serious jeopardy. Munir Uz Zaman / AFP

It’s now more than seven years since Pakistan hosted a cricket series against a team other than Zimbabwe. When the civil war was at its height in Sri Lanka, tours had to be abandoned midway through, and Australia and West Indies refused to play their World Cup games in Colombo in 1996.

England cut short an ODI series in India in 2008 after the terror attacks in Mumbai, and as recently as last year, Australia called off a tour of Bangladesh on the advice of the government’s security agencies.

The chances of Pakistan hosting a high-profile side — it’s been quite a while since Zimbabwe were taken seriously — in the immediate future remain remote, and the events of last Friday might mean that Bangladesh joins them on the no-go list.

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The Holey Artisan Bakery in the Dhaka neighbourhood of Gulshan was a popular haunt of expatriates and well-heeled Bangladeshis. With well-guarded embassies and consulates in the vicinity, it was also considered one of the safer areas in the city. But Friday night’s attack on the bakery, which cost 20 people their lives, will almost certainly have huge ramifications for Bangladesh cricket.

It had only been a couple of days since the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) announced the itinerary for England’s tour of the country, starting September 30. That series now looks like going the way of the Australia one last year.

“The safety and security of our players and management is always of paramount importance to ECB and this applies to all teams representing England on overseas tours,” said an England and Wales Cricket Board spokesperson.

“We will continue to monitor and assess the situation in Bangladesh over the coming weeks and months and will undertake a thorough and robust pre-tour inspection of planned security arrangements for the England team.”

For Bangladesh, already reeling from the very real possibility of being consigned to a second division of Test cricket, these are not the best of times.

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