Any discussion on whether England should continue their tour to India needs to consider the following points: the team had been staying in the Taj Mahal hotel the week before.
All the white kit, including blazers and caps, was locked away in a room there when the fanatics attacked.
The Middlesex team were due to check into the same hotel a day after the siege started, and the England high performance squad were meant to be staying in Mumbai last week, but for some reason had their training camp switched at the last minute.
During 2008, India has witnessed blasts in Jaipur (during the IPL games), Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Guwahati (during Australia’s tour), and now in Mumbai.
If this was Pakistan or Sri Lanka, of course, there would be no discussion; the tour would have been cancelled straight away.
However, India is an economic powerhouse, has a grip on the international game, and has the England players falling over themselves to express their desire to play in the lucrative Indian Premier League.
Now, the Champions League, in which Middlesex were about to set out to join, has been temporarily postponed, whilst the rival Indian Cricket League has been cancelled.
If these are troubled times for India, it is only natural that the sport many consider akin to a religion will share in any grief.
This would not be the first time that England has been unable to fulfill its obligations in India.
They were due in the autumn of 1930, but plans were scuppered following a nationalist revival in which Congress issued an Independence Pledge that denounced the British for having “ruined India economically, politically, culturally, and spiritually.”
To submit further to their rule was “a crime against man and God.”
England was also due to set sail in the autumn of 1939 but was prevented by the outbreak of war.
Within three hours of the England team landing in 1984, India’s
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