The Darkest hours - revisited.

[MIG]

I had just dropped off my son at school, got into my car, switched on BBC Radio news - caught the last part of the news - something about players injured on their way to the ground....

Still did not click in my head - who could they be talking about? NZ, Aus, SA.... or was it some regional game in Iran or Afghanistan? and then, like bolt of lightning from the blue - it dawned on me...the news was about Pakistan - it had to be - but how, why ?

The BBC news bulletin shifted to rebuilding of Gaza and other matters - now cold sweat had started to form on my forehead.

I gathered some courage and called a dear Sri Lankan friend of mine - I knew he also listened to BBC World Service on his car radio - "Janaka" - I mumbelled - "Yes" came his reply - "has something happened in Pakistan?" A pause followed.

"Yes" was his answer - "something horrible has happened", he added.

He then explained to me what he had heard about the attack and more astonishingly, continued to reassure me that these things can happen as they do in SL as well.

By this time, my head was pounding with an ache I hadn’t felt for years (was that when BW passed away?) – a sickening realization that an atrocity of such magnitude had taken place in Pakistan was settling in.

Like a Zombie in a B Class SciFi movie, I continued my drive to work – feeling lifeless and looking straight ahead in a trance (how safe is my driving?) - hoping that when I got to work and logged in to PP, magically, some kind soul would tell me that this was an unfounded rumor and that all was well in our blessed land.

Not to be.

Finally At work, I clicked on the PP link and I looked for the customary score updates thread (the brain was in full denial mode now) but the first unread thread screamed for attention (my head pounded more) was about the attack.

It was true.

My mind wandered back to the dark hours surrounding BWs death – at that point, I had wondered if Pakistani cricket would ever experience a more sinister or darker moment – I suppose I had my answer now!

May ALLAH have mercy on the souls of the brave policemen who died on that fateful day and May ALLAH protect our land from strife – Ameen.



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Pls feel free to add your first reactions as well.

[natalia]

Well...

Usually after exams I stay back in school and just hang out with some mates for a few hours, but today was a different day - my favorite cricket team was in the middle of a thrilling test match. It was going to be the best day of the match and the fate of the match would be decided that day as well... I begged my mom to allow me to come home as soon as I finished the exams and she did - I rushed through the exams, picked up my bag, and ran home, just in time I guess, I got home at around 1.05pm and the match started at 1pm. Got home, turned on the television, turned on the channel.

Nothing was there - usually the match is being shown on that channel but when I opened the channel it was just a logo of my Cable TV provider (StarHub). I thought, something would be wrong. The match couldn't have been finished so soon. Neither could there have been rain since I have not heard of many matches at all in Karachi being spoilt by rain.

I called up my cable provider and asked, "Why is the cricket match between Pakistan and Sri Lanka not being broadcasted on the cricket channel, is there an error?". The man told me to wait for around 2 or 3 minutes because he would go on and contact the channel directly itself. After a few minutes he got me back on the line and said to me, "Are you sure the match is even on?". I quickly replied "Yeah, obviously.". And he said, "Well you better check again, the match has been cancelled."

I shivered. Feared for the worst. I knew what was happening.
I turned on my computer and went on Cricinfo. Saw the main top headline, "SL team injured in terror attack".

I went on PP and saw the thread. Apparently it happened only about 30 or 45 minutes before I got home.

From then on I just followed the breaking news blog the whole day and was watching coverage of the incident on TV.

I'll never forget this for a very very long time - very sad news. This truly did not deserve to happen in a country full of people who have cricket as their religion and players as their gods, a country full of nice and loving people.

[Saqs]

I got a call from my mate in Pak while at work when it happened (I work in Australia)

Thought he was kidding around, but then thought it couldn't be a joke cuz he wouldn't waste his credit to call otherwise.

At first I thought it would have just been some other political rally gone haywire and the bus just happened to be driving through.

Never imagined that the bus itself was the target.

[Genghis]

I was actually at on PP when it happened. In fact I had just created the thread for Day 3's play. I was expecting a comeback from Younis and crew, and hoping to finally see some Pakistani batting. All of a sudden I refreshed the page to see the start of a thread I didn't beleive at first. I immediately assured myself that it was probably a minor incident and not related to the team. Slowly more comments starting filling the thread, more vague reports on who was injured, players were shot, umpires were shot, some possibly critical.

I started searching other news bulletins for any more info I could find. It began to dawn on me that it was real and a great tragedy had occured. I knew immediately the test match had been abandoned, but that was the least of my worries. I was still of the opinion that these players were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but as I heard more and read more, it became obvious that the SL team were in fact the target! I was gobsmacked. Why would anyone do such a thing? What would be a motive? What Imran Khan had said (and many other including me) about cricketing teams not being a target was so far from the truth.

When I got home, I spoke to my family to inform them of what had happened. We immediately started flicking through news channels for more info. Images of terrorists firing, images of blood, shattered windscreens. What would be the outcry, who would claim responsibility?

I hope Pakistan recovers from this and becomes much stronger as a result. The people of Pakistan deserve much better than this.

[Saj]

I woke up at 7am bleary eyed and with the intention of seeing our score at lunchtime on day 3 of the test. My thoughts were we'd be 2 down with YK in commanding form once again. I thought I'd quickly check the score and start getting ready for work.

I turned the tv on and read the headline on Teletext. My heart literally stopped and I felt the butterflies in my stomach. My stomach started to turn as I put in the page number on teletext and waited for the page to appear. When the page appeared I turned on my phone and saw text messages galore about the incident.

Little did I know that yesterday was to be one of the most depressing and sad days I can remember. There have been some real lows over the years following Pakistan cricket and yesterday ranks amongst the worst.

On a family level, we had some good news, but my mind was on the events in Lahore. You go through all the emotions dont you - anger, confusion, disbelief etc etc.

[AZ]

I had tried to pull an all-nighter to watch the 1st ball, but was throughly exhausted by 7 am (8 am PST)...but couldn't do and nodded off. I woke up at around 1 pm and dashed into the living room to check the match on TV, but they were showing extended highlights instead...I thought to myself that's strange...switched to DAWN News and then my day was shot to hell...physically felt sick and was horrified, especially becuase the 1st thing I saw on the ticker showed 'Sri Lankan player shot in the chest...'

[Inswinging Yorker]

Truly tragic. Lets hope and pray that this never happens again anywhere in the world.

One must now wonder are players/officials truly safe?

I hope these cowards are caught and put to death

[pace007]

i woke up in the morning for work - went down and put the tv on, no one is showing it in the uk so i put sky text on to check the score - i saw a headline referring of sangakarra saying the players are safe now
i feared the worst, switched channel over to sky sports news and they were showing the scenes and like AhmedZulfiqhar it made me feel physically sick

it happened in a place i walked by many many times when i stayed in Lahore in 2000/2001, just 5mins from where we live whenever we go Pakistan

[Salman]

The play starts at midnight here, I had work in the morning but still wanted to catch the first 10 or so overs...

23.59 - logged into the online stream expecting to see the players walking out on the feild.

00:01 - Realised i was watching previous days highlights and saw text "Match Abandonded" .... Has it been raining in lahore thought?

00:02 - Logged into cricinfo to check the update - Server Busy / timedout

00:03 - Logged into PP, saw 500 users online and then breaking news headline... "SL players in terror attack"

Hung around on PP for a while but decided to hit the sack and imagin none of this was happening...

slept on and off for the next few hours thinking -
:Zardari

[amarmak]

I am still in shock... Pakpassion has helped me a lot. I havent been posting but just reading and browing the site has helped me recover.

[BoomBoomAfridi]

I live in the UK, woke up at 6.00 am thinking I have missed the first hour of play, so still in bed decided to quickly to log onto the internet on my phone to check what the score is, idea was if we were doing well i'l go down and watch the game but if we were strugling just go back to sleep!

However when I reached the Cricinfo homepage and read the main headline 'Sri Lankan team bus attacked by terrorists' I was in utter shock, my heart started to pound, memories of previous controversies (Asif-Akthar drug case, Oval test match, Bob Woolmer's death) started to flash around in my head, soon I realised that this latest setback was much bigger and the consequences of this would be alot more serious than some of the previous setbacks.

Decided to go down, swtiched the telly on and really just could not believe what I was seeing!

Why would anyone even consider targeting those that are there to simply provide entertainment and have nothing to do with all the political issues??? Madness!!!

[Da Best]

11:00 First i woke up, ( holidays ) and sat on the PC, switched it on and waited, thought to myself, '' the computer is loading faster'', once it finished i logged on to Cricinfo, the first thing i saw was a Pakistani policeman on the front and then i thought, '' must be security check up or something'' and then i read the headline, ''SL team bus attacked'' then i ran to the living room and ''said there's been an attack on the team'' changed the channel to GEO and the first time i saw the faces of the attackers, shocked and speechless.

[Islamabadi]

i slept around 6 pm and woke up at 11:30 to watch this match, but i first turned to Geo news to find out what was happening back home and i was shocked to see gunmen shooting at lankans... i was speechless

[OZGOD]

It was just past midnight here in Boston and I had logged on to check Cricinfo to see what the score was in the Pak-SL Test, as well as to check on news of Australia's victory against SA. The headline was "SL cricketers attacked by gunmen" or something like that. I logged onto PP and the "attack" thread was already six pages long.

[SohailQureshi]

i was really looking forward to a good days play by pakistan, so i decided to stay up the whole night because i wasnt feeling well, im from the UK and then about 4:20AM i text my brother saying i dont feel well so he came to my room and we were watching the India - New Zealand match...

Then Ravi shastri said something which will stay in my head forever that an incident has occured in pakistan where the Sri Lankan players have been shot... me and my brother were fearing the worst that some off the players have been killed...

So then i logged on to Pak Passion and saw the thread which shocked me! and ever since that day ive the same feeling off when Bob Woolmer died, no words can describe it!!

[Stewie]

It was around 10.30 pm I believe. I am in Houston and we are 11 hours behind Pakistan (depending on Daylight savings). I was at a friend's house when his dad calls him from Lahore and tells him what had happened. It was fairly early in the whole ordeal. He apparently was either in the area or someone he knew was in the area at the time. We quickly tuned into aajtak since thats the only desi news channel he gets.

Needless to say for about an hour we listened to the news and our blood kept boiling over biased Indian media. I left came home and stayed up until 3 in the morning surfing PakPassion and other news sites hoping like anything the perps had been caught and the players were not in danger.

My wife was in tears when she saw the police carrying bodies of our shaheed jawans away on TV.

Unfortunately, the perps did not get caught then and they are still at large.

With each passing day, and visit to blogs such as PP, my respect for SL players and SL as a nation grows more and more as does my utter disbelief and disappointment at our lack of professionalism and lawlessness and security. We could have done loads better to ensure protection of our guests and friends.

May God help us all and secure Pakistan's future. Ameen!

[Oxy]

I didnt particularly fancy waking up at 5am to watch he start of the game - but would have tuned in from after lunch at 7.30am.

My mobile rang at 4.30am - I assumed it was my alarm, so I turned it off. Then it rang again, but I dont remember turning it off.

Back to sleep.

Then my mobile message tone went off at 7.28am.

Message was from a non-Pak guy I know who absolutely HATES cricket.

The message said: "U P*k*z r mad. They shot up the Sri Lankan team!"

At the same time I realise that it was KAshif who had rang me from Kuwait at 4.30am.

2 calls from Kashif in Kuwait & a text from someone that would NEVER mention cricket. I feared the worst

I put the radio news on - I was expected to hear that the entire team had been taken out / blown up / stadium attacked etc etc.

It was almost a relief when they said that 5 players had been injured...


My wife had also woken up - and she must have seen the anxiety on my face & knew immedately that something was wrong.

She detests cricket - probably will hate it even more now.

And then we awaited like everyone else , as the events unfolded through the day

[MIG]

Dark day indeed!! I suppose something to tell our children ( or grand children) one day ...

[siddharth]

I was watching Ind-Nz match live.suddenly commentators started telling about Sl playeres being attacked and got injured .

Couldn't belive my ears, immediately checked Cricinfo .No news there .

Then went to BBC site and the news in brief was there .But it reported 6 seriously injured .I feared the worst .

Then after some times got the inofrmation the injuries were minor and they were fine .Still the shock and disbelief was beyond expressing in words .

[abc_to_xyz]

As I have 2 months leave from my College for my HSSC Exams, I've developed a bad habit of waking up around 2-3am! so I wake up at 12am-1pm normally. But when the test series got started, I decided to change my routine by waking up bit early (9pm) and start my day with watching my fav. sport to remove signs of early yawning....

On 3rd Day of 2nd Test, on schedule, by using more then two alarms, I got up 9am. Without brusing teeth, washing mouth & changing clothes I started to crawl toward the TV room to see the preview of 3rd day. While I was thinking about the probability of Pakistan winning the match, I turned on the TV and by chance, ARY NEWS was automatically started, I only came to know about firing at Lahore at that time (I though it was due to Nawaz's Ineligibility) so I changed channel to Ten Sports (to watch the post-match conversation), But there was nothing like live, I changed my channel to PTV - same No live. Then that lahore firing thing get back into my Head and I started to think the unimaginable, I instantly switch to 2nd News Channel (GEO) and immediately got stunned when I saw that Headline "Attack on srilankan team - Match postponed", My head started to get faint, I was losing earth beneath my foot, THIS IS NOT HAPPENING, I MUST BE DREAMING!!! But I wasn't - IT WAS REALITY.. ONE THOUGHT that got into my head instantly that if anyone's killed - I started to surf across all news channel to find about any casualties, and Finally found that 6 injured, 5 policemen killed.... 2nd though was how many players are included in injured list and how seriously are they injured.. Although, gov. was saying that players are OK, but I was not believing on their words (as same kind of quotes was heard before the death of Benazir in hospital)...

[Stewie]

I think its a wake up call for us all.

Our government (read Zardari) is so pre-occupied with strengthening its hold on power, and comabting any threat from Sharifs and their clan that they forgot about security promised to our guests.
Thats what it comes down to.

Having said that the Sharifs are bunch of badmashes as well. They created tension at the worst possible time. PCB is the orst culprit of it all. It was their assurance that our guests would be given presidential security and they failed to make good on that promise.

Ijaz Butt should have done better to get the govt involved and provide the best possible security to the SL team. He and his team at PCB have let us and our guests down.

Maybe this will help us rid of Zardari and PCB beaurocrats and hopefully have a stronger and honest government in place. But I know its just wishful thinking from me.

[dblock]

I think I had one of the most bizarre yet shocking findings..

I woke up rather bleary eyed but slightly late for work, I thought I didn't have time to turn on computer and find out the score and perhaps watch 15 or 20 mins, but still intently interested in finding out the score by lunchtime.

So on my mobile tried to navigate to the cricinfo website - but a problem it seemed. Only the India v New Zealand link was being displayed. I refreshed three times but yet the same link, same scorecard.

No news of any other cricket..even when going to live scorecards. My immediate reaction was the cricinfo simply wasn't bothered to cover the game on mobile and I was just about to close the connection and just forget about the score until I reached work (Still thinking that switching on the television or computer would again make me late).

Then at one last attempt, I managed to navigate to series home of Pakistan v Sri Lanka on the mobile and slowly emerged a picture..a policemen holding a gun (first reaction being poor attendance once again, only policemen are watching at the stadium) then the moment of extreme shock the caption under the photo - firing at Sri Lankan cricketers.

Immediately jumped out of bed and switched on Sky News and there it was breaking news all over the place..and my heart sunk even thought the first words I heard were that the cricketers were only injured but not fatally.

[Farhan!]

I was on campus at that time, working in the productions team for an event coming up in the second week of march. I had been there for several hours and was constantly working. Suddenly, around 11.45pm, I get a call from my brother and he asked if I had seen the news. I was like, no im still on campus. He told me that the SL team bus had been attacked and they've been injured. He told me that some news channels also said that some had been taken to the hospital because they had been shot. Now, that wasn't the news you want to hear after working in the production team for so many hours. I was planning to go home around 12 and watch the match. But this news shocked me. And I was constantly asking my brother if he was serious or was just joking. I knew he wouldn't joke about such a thing but this was unbelievable and I wasn't ready to accept it. He finally told me that this was all true and they've been attacked around Liberty. I just wanted to look at it myself. I left the campus and rushed home and logged on pakpassion. I felt ashamed and sad. All I thought of doing was to wait for the news that all players are safe. Once, that news came out, I felt better butstill extremely extremely sad and angry at the same time on how someone could take human life into their hands so easily!!

[Inswinger]

I woke up at 5 AM (NY time) and eagerly turned to my BB to get a quick update on the score. I was hoping Manzoor had dominated like the day before and had gotten past 150. But what I was greeted with was totally unexpected and unbelievable. The picture of a Pakistani policeman on the home page of cricinfo seemed very odd. Getting to the headlines my stomach began to turn and I felt as if I had lost a loved one. Didnt have much time to go online on my computer so I logged onto PP with my BB. Slowly but surely the reality set in. This was the end. I don't know why someone would do something like this. It really hurts because we could not protect our guests in our homes. Condolences to those who lost loved ones. The barbarians behind this horrendous attack must be given the ultimate punishment.

[Saj]

One of the saddest aspects of this is that those of us like myself who over the years have advocated that sport and politics shouldnt mix, now realise that they will always mix from now on.

Cricket I feel will never be the same, cricketers themselves I fear will never be the same after the terrible incident in Lahore.

Heartbreaking stuff.

[purplehaze]

I was about to hit bed in night, just thought to check scores in an Indian portal. Well, to my surprise, it was instead filled with this news headlines telling how many killed, what players are up to, video, suspects etc. etc. Next, I moved to PP and noticed there was already big sticky thread out there. It was sad to see that security personals lost their life. I was filled with thoughts for sometime and in next few minutes, I went to bed.

For some reason, I didn't experience shock to the magnitude some members experienced here. How long can these things continue to surprise us? Aren't these things slowly becoming a routine in our part of world? I may sound pessimistic, but somehow there's always a fear of such things in back of my mind on big occasions. Whether it's a festival, or republic day celebrations, or some tournament - I always feel sigh of relief when things finish without any terror attack. Moment I complete my occasional trip in Mumbai local, there's a sigh of relief in my mind. Moment I come out of crowded multiplexes, there's sense of relief. No, presence of security personal doesn't assures me in this part of world. We can't rely on them. All they can do is, be first to sacrifice their life. Nothing more those poor souls can do. Those who can do something are busy sleeping in luxurious rooms.

I hope I'm wrong, but bet this wasn't the last. They will continue to surprise us in different ways. World is increasingly becoming a sh1t place to live in.

[Edit]: Funny it may sound- moment I submitted above post, I went to check news at rediff and these were the first few lines of top headline

"Hinting at intelligence inputs about the possibility of terrorist attacks during the forthcoming polls, Home Minister P Chidambaram [Images] on Wednesday said that militants might attempt to do something 'dramatic' during election time. "