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India's tour of Pak is impossible: Gavaskar
Sunil Gavaskar said it was 'impossible' for India to tour with the political equation between the two nations growing tricky after Mumbai terror attacks.
- Press Trust of India
- Updated: December 10, 2008 03:20 PM IST
Read Time: 2 min
New Delhi:
"It will be difficult in any case for the Indian players to play against Paksitan at the moment. Diplomatically there has been a fall out between the two nations and I don't see why cricket won't follow the suit and so at the moment it is impossible to go ahead with the tour," Gavaskar said.
India is scheduled to tour Pakistan from January 6 to February 19 for five one-dayers and three Tests, subject to government clearance. But the political scenario appeared to be grim after it was found that the terrorists attacking Mumbai were Pakistani citizens, who were trained there.
On England and India playing just after a fortnight of the Mumbai mayhem, Gavaskar felt the teams would lack the "free spirit" in the two-Test match series.
"The guys will be concentrating and focussing once they take the field for sure because they are trained in that way. But it won't be easy and I feel the free spirit or the intensity with which they played in the one-dayers won't be there this time," he told a news channel.
Asked if it was right to host the Test-series in this troubled times, Gavaskar said, "Life has to go on. It has been 12 days since the Mumbai attacks took place and the mourning period is gone. We have to plan and look ahead so that such tragedy doesn't happen in future, so just like all other activities cricket should also go on."
"However, it will take a long time to recover, you can't actually recover completely from such tragedy," he added.
Former India skipper Sunil Gavaskar on Wednesday said it was "impossible" for India to tour Pakistan early next year with the political equation between the two countries growing tricky in the aftermath of Mumbai terror attacks."It will be difficult in any case for the Indian players to play against Paksitan at the moment. Diplomatically there has been a fall out between the two nations and I don't see why cricket won't follow the suit and so at the moment it is impossible to go ahead with the tour," Gavaskar said.
India is scheduled to tour Pakistan from January 6 to February 19 for five one-dayers and three Tests, subject to government clearance. But the political scenario appeared to be grim after it was found that the terrorists attacking Mumbai were Pakistani citizens, who were trained there.
On England and India playing just after a fortnight of the Mumbai mayhem, Gavaskar felt the teams would lack the "free spirit" in the two-Test match series.
"The guys will be concentrating and focussing once they take the field for sure because they are trained in that way. But it won't be easy and I feel the free spirit or the intensity with which they played in the one-dayers won't be there this time," he told a news channel.
Asked if it was right to host the Test-series in this troubled times, Gavaskar said, "Life has to go on. It has been 12 days since the Mumbai attacks took place and the mourning period is gone. We have to plan and look ahead so that such tragedy doesn't happen in future, so just like all other activities cricket should also go on."
"However, it will take a long time to recover, you can't actually recover completely from such tragedy," he added.
Topics mentioned in this article
Cricket
New Zealand Cricket Team
Pakistan Cricket Team
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