Cricket war
One may read this headline and chuckle a bit if you have ever read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In the saga, the “Krikkit War” pertains to giant robots wielding cricket mallets and slapping super nuclear cricket balls into planets and suns to destroy the rest of the galaxy.
Things happen a little different in reality.
In Pakistan, a country that is very much into cricket, there was a commando-style raid against the Sri Lankan cricket team. The New York Times reports that seven people were killed in the attack. The Pakistani authorities allege that those involved in the attack are Taliban fighters trained in Waziristan and are part of the same group that attempted an assassination on Pervez Musharraf.
Punjab, where the attack took place, is a cultural center that has long been isolated from the violence in the north, and the attack marked the possible end to that streak of relative peace. The Taliban group has long been fighting a type of shadow war with India, using its established strongholds within Pakistan as staging points, all while fighting against the Pakistani authorities from within.
Cricket’s never been the world’s most popular sport, but like all sports, it can transcend the boundaries between people and countries. Germans and allied forces played soccer together during cease fires between the trenches. The Japanese love baseball more than America does now. It is a shame whenever a team is targeted for a political statement. No one wins a war in politics.
Rob @ June 18, 2009