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Loading ...It really is moving to hear a first-hand account such as this. When lives are at stake, and indeed lost, cricket suddenly becomes inconsequential.
Sangakkara’s account of the attack
By Will last year, at the start of March Add your comment below
You really need to read this.
I was sitting next to Thilan Samaraweera and close to the young Tharanga Paranavitana. For some reason I moved my head to get a better view and a split second later I felt a bullet fizz past my ear into the vacant seat. Fortunately, as a team, we remained quite calm. No one panicked. After what must have been two minutes standing still, we urged the driver to make a run for the stadium just a few hundred metres away: “Go, go, go” we shouted.
The truth is we owe our lives to the courageous Mohammad Khalil, the driver. I will forever be grateful to him. The tyres of the bus had been shot out and he was in grave personal danger, exposed to gunfire at the front of the bus. But he was hell-bent on getting us to safety and, somehow, he got us moving again. Had Khalil not acted with such courage and presence of mind most of us would have been killed.
Standing still next to the roundabout we were sitting ducks for the 12 gunmen. We only found out afterwards that a rocket launcher just missed us as we began moving and turned for the stadium gates, the rocket blowing up an electricity pylon. Khalil saw a hand grenade tossed at us that failed to explode. Someone must have been looking over us because right now it seems a miracle we survived.
Tags: kumar-sangakkara, pakistan, sri lanka in pakistan, sri-lanka, terrorism, terrorist, terrorist attacks |
3 Responses to “Sangakkara’s account of the attack”
March 4th, 2009 at 3.47 pm
March 4th, 2009 at 8.06 pm
A compelling account from one of the game’s finest ambassadors. No player should be coerced into going into such a dangerous situation in future – I am not suggesting that was the case with the Sri Lankans, as KS said they were happy to be there, but certainly there have been teams playing on the subcontinent that would rather not have been there.
Tragic for those that died, and a sad blow for Pakistani cricket.
March 4th, 2009 at 8.55 pm
this attack on Sri Lanka’s unsuspecting Cricket team is tragic because of the deaths and because of the long term effect this will have internationally
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