Image courtesy, y of Tasmanian Times

The news of the horrific shooting in Christchurch is still trickling in. 49 people have been killed. The Bangladesh team narrowly escaped this attack. It has brought back memories of the attack on Sri Lanka in Pakistan. Terrorism has no place in the world. If people kill each other then there will not be anyone left in this world. The senseless killing of the 49 people is tragic. It would have been a disaster if something had to happen to Bangladesh. Two countries would have been broken. I am more spiritual than religious. Surely there must be a god of cricket. Cricket should go beyond politics. It should be a unifying factor rather than something that divides the country. I just hope that Bangladesh and New Zealand will be in a proper frame of mind for the World Cup. I have had many encounters with death. This ranged from drowning when I was a child to just missing the tube in which the bomb detonated in the July 7th bombing in London. I am philosophical about death. It just was not the time for something to happen to the Bangladeshi players. I do hope they do well in the World Cup. The bottom line though is we cannot progress as humans until we are able to put our differences aside. This hatred that exists within our hearts against each other has to be eradicated.

March 10th 2019 was the last match for England in the current season. The game was not part of the agreement between SKY and West Indies which gave the WICB the rights of the game too. They thankfully decided to telecast it free on YouTube. I was initially happy to see the chat option as I felt that people could discuss the game and the state of English Cricket. There was a chat option on a live stream during the Blood Wolf Moon and that was really good. Instead what I came across made me cringe. I could not block people fast enough so I turned the chat off.

The Indians and Pakistanis were at each other’s throats. People from one country saying that they would nuke the other. They were cursing each other their mothers and their sisters. The curses they mentioned were extremely bad. A person could get lynched in India or Pakistan for saying such things. I am proud to be British and I am proud to be Indian. Seeing that spam made me feel sad. There were serious military tensions between India and Pakistan at that time but feeling hate and abusing people will not solve anything. My father in law fought in the 1965 and 1971 wars. Some of the stories are horrific but the ones that touched me the most were those of humanity. War is brutal. The aftermath does not end when the war ends. It lasts for years even more so for the soldiers who fight in the wars.

We have to remember the people who died. New Zealand would have been one of the last places in the world you would expect an attack like this to happen. We have to wonder what the global implications of this will be. The only way to stop racism and terrorism from winning is to continue life as normal and do even better than before. The best way to come out of this is to have one of the best World Cups.

Speaking of the World Cup; I really hope the match between India and Pakistan goes ahead. It is necessary for the countries and for cricket. I do believe that the team that boycotts the game should lose points. That being said I do support India wearing the caps to bring awareness to what happened in the attack in Pulwama. There will be heightened security. Even more so because it is happening in Manchester. I hope things go well and everyone who was affected by this recovers as fast as possible. In the meantime I look forward to your comments especially if India and Pakistan should play each other during the World Cup.