When cricketers fight the terrorists!

"Thilan (Samaraweera) has a bullet shot in his leg but he is fine. Paranavitana (Tharanga Paranavitana) was in the hospital and he had a shrapnel in his chest but thank god it didn't penetrate deep in the body. It was just on the surface. Everyone is OK. I had shrapnel inside my shoulder but they have all been taken out. I am OK. Ajantha (Ajantha Mendis) had a few in his back and scalp but he is fine. Everyone else is perfectly alright," said Sangakkara." ----These are the few lines which posed as a conundrum on me. Have these cricketers really
gone through all this? Atleast the statement passed on by Sangakkara sounded as if this particular feat, of shrapnel penetration, was one of the activities in their daily chores and did not matter to them much. A question that i may like to impose is, are the Srilankan cricketers brave players or they are just foolish dilletantes? Even after the 26/11 attack, the problems of Taliban taking over Pakistan, other cricketing countries refusing to go to Pakistan, these people had the chutzpah to visit the Pak soil!

The other day i was having a conversation with one of my best buddies. We came to an ingenious idea as to how the players can be protected from such attacks even while playing on the Pak soil. Every player should be carrying a sack on the field, along with the other cricketing accoutrements, which would have a pistol, some hand grenades, an AK 47 rifle and some dry fruits. If need arises players can defend themselves with these. This would
have an added advantage of a reduced security. In these times of recessions this can play a major factor ;).

But some of the problems that the players would face, we thought was, say if the bowler asks the fielder to shoot at the non strikers end. eg: Iran Pathan at the non strikers end yells to Sehwag,with a hope of getting a run out, saying "SHOOT SHOOT". Now the fielder would be put into a really big dilema as to whether there is a terrorist outbreak and he needs to shoot by pulling out the AK 47 from his bag or he needs to shoot the ball.
Now Mr. Dhoni has to be really careful in such cricumstances while muttering the words which he uses to encourage the bowlers and unsettle the batsman, like "Le le isko, apna aadmi hai" (Take this guy out, hez our man ..thought of translating this one just for my ever growing international fans who follow my blog ....muahaha!). The bowler might
misunderstand him and take the batsman off his life with the pistol in his bag.

I bet in these circumstances the players would mutually be benefitted as they would always be on guard because the next time when there is a catch to be taken near the boundary rope and the bowler yells "CATCH IT", the fielder would be rattling his brains to find out whether this was a call to catch the grenade that has been hurled or the ball :).