Zimbabwe will go ahead with their third and final one-day international against Pakistan on Sunday at the Gaddafi Stadium despite security concerns after a suicide bomber blew himself up close to the stadium on Friday night during the second ODI. “The incident hasn’t affected the tour and Zimbabwe will play its last match of the tour as planned,” PCB spokesman Agha Akbar said on Saturday.
Akbar also said that all the tickets for Sunday’s game have been sold out and a crowd of around 27,000 is expected at the stadium. Zimbabwe team spokesman lovemore Banda confirmed the team would go ahead with the game. He said in a statement that “capital city police officer Amin Vaince said what occurred was a cylinder blast which killed two people and their forensics experts are examining remains from the explosion to ascertain the cause.”
Information minister Pervez Rashid told Geo TV that a police officer was killed and six were wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up, nearly one kilometer from the stadium. PCB’s chief operating officer Subhan Ahmed accompanied Vaince for a meeting with Zimbabwe officials and players at the team hotel on Saturday, reassuring them that efficient security measures would be in place. “He (Vaince) assured the travelling party of continued safety on the tour, and said the fact that the blast occurred outside their red zone means that the security measures put in place for the tour were not breached,” Banda said.
A loud explosion was heard inside the stadium, but the game didn’t stop as Pakistan won it by six wickets and took an unassailable 2-0 lead. Initially, police claimed the explosion was caused by electric transformer, in an apparent bid to avoid panic inside the stadium where at least 20,000 spectators were watching the game.
Thousands of policemen had been deployed outside the stadium and spectators had to endure several checkpoints while waiting in long queues hours before the start of the day/night matches at 4:00 p.m. local time (1100 GMT).
Minister blows PCB’s cover
The PCB hierarchy is not happy with the timing of the disclosure made by Federal Minister for Information, Pervez Rasheed about the alleged foiled suicide bomb attack. Rasheed told Geo News channel that due to the bravery and vigilance of the policemen on duty the suicide bomber failed to penetrate the security cordon around the stadium where the second one-day international was taking place between Pakistan and Zimbabwe.
According to the minister, the attempted attack was foiled outside the outer security cordon and a kilometer away from the stadium. Rasheed’s disclosure caused embarrassment for not only the PCB but also the senior police officials who after the blasts had said they occurred due to an explosion in a power transformer close to the stadium. later a police spokesman said the blast occurred due to an explosion of a gas cylinder of a rickshaw near Kalma chowk. He said originally it was thought that the rickshaw had explosives fitted in it but investigations had shown it was a gas cylinder blast.
The Pakistani media also perhaps realizing the sensitivity of the moment didn’t give much coverage to the incident and played up the police version until Rasheed spoke about it. “It is so embarrassing and we fear now that all the hard work we put into making this tour possible could go waste. As the timing of the minister’s statement was not right we wanted to talk about it after the Zimbabwe cricket team returned home on Monday,” a reliable source in the board said. He said PCB Chairman, Shaharyar Khan and senior member Najam Sethi had both been in touch with government officials on the incident that continued to cause confusion as the police till late night were sticking to their version of the blasts.
