A week tomorrow David Morgan, president of the International Cricket Council, will host a telephone conference between the member boards of the sport's world governing body to discuss the ramifications of the terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka team in Lahore last week.
It will be the first of many conversations that might – some say will – lead to a seismic shift in the landscape of world cricket. Until now the main considerations in organizing Test series and other international cricket fixtures have been commercial and, with the power base moving east, political. Now, at least as far as the players are concerned, there is only one consideration: safety. The point was made last night by Kevin Pietersen, who said he might not go to India for the Twenty20 Indian Premier League due to start next month.
"If I don't think it's right then I'll not be going," he said. "I'll be speaking to Bangalore, to the ECB, to my agent, and to security advisers."
The main losers are Pakistan, but the other three Test-playing countries on the subcontinent – India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh – also have much at stake. Standing by to profit are Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and, above all, Dubai, home of the ICC's headquarters. The Gulf states could become a new home for cricket.
Cricket is of immeasurable cultural importance throughout the subcontinent and, as the gunmen in Lahore showed, the sport is an easy target for terrorists. Those who represent professional cricketers around the world have told the Observer that players, with Pietersen prominent among them, are harboring serious reservations about traveling not only to Pakistan, but to the entire region. All forms of the international game may be forced to move.
The Gulf region is close enough, being a couple of hours by air from parts of India and Pakistan. Nearly half of those living in the Gulf states are of Pakistani, Indian or Bangladeshi origin, so the audience is there. So are the pitches, stadiums and facilities, most notably at Dubai's billion-pound Sports City complex – where Australia play Pakistan next month – and Abu Dhabi's new state-of-the-art cricket center. The climate is favorable, too, with play possible for seven months of the year. English county sides have not been slow to take advantage: six will head east later this month to step up their pre-season preparations at the Pro Arch Trophy, staged at venues in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.
There has also been talk of English grounds staging "neutral" Tests, for example between Pakistan and Australia, while England are playing home series. A further potential shift in the landscape has been identified here, with the traditional format of Test series between two nations being challenged. If Pakistan and Australia were here while England were playing South Africa, say, why not stage a four-team Test contest?
"Why not? You've got to be open-minded," says Sean Morris, chief executive of the Professional Cricketers' Association, the players' union for domestic cricket. Morris told Observer Sport that he had proposed a change to the England and Wales Cricket Board in January, suggesting the introduction of triangular series in future. That was before the Lahore attack and now Morris would not rule out a quadrangular Test competition that would suit the short English summer even more, and would also be a viable option in the Gulf.
"The problem is the Future Tours Programme," he says of the Test-playing fixture list that the ICC's member boards agree for years in advance. The current FTP runs until 2012, with 22 Test and one-day series due to be played in the subcontinent by then. England are next due there against Pakistan (2010) and Bangladesh (2012). According to the players' representatives, all those series are under threat – certainly Pakistan's games will be moved – as well as the 2011 World Cup, originally due to be co-hosted by India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and the forthcoming IPL Twenty20 competition.
"It's quite tricky to get the availability of the teams," Morris says. "But there is no reason why a quadrangular series wouldn't work – after all, the [proposed] Stanford series here this summer involved four nations." By coincidence, 2012 is the centenary of the previous Test series with more than two teams, when England hosted Australia and South Africa.
The thinking is that a quadrangular Test series would tap into the large immigrant and expatriate population on these shores. That would also be the case in the Gulf. And with player safety now the prime objective – "playing in the subcontinent will certainly be guided by security experts," confirmed Tim May, head of the worldwide cricketers' union, Fica – it would allow a greater concentration of international cricket to be played in a secure location.
Pakistan will stage no international cricket for the foreseeable future. "Obviously the landscape has changed. We will clearly not be sending cricketers to Pakistan until a significant change occurs there," Morgan says. "The priority of the ICC is to find ways of providing international cricket away from Pakistan on neutral territory."
Asked about the future of international cricket elsewhere in the region, Morgan denied there was any likelihood of moving games. "To extend that [relocating] to all of the subcontinent would be a mistake," he says.
Because of the delicate political sensitivities in cricket, though, he has no option but to say that. The game is effectively ruled from India, and the ICC president will not want to upset the Indians. Here, though, is a starker view, painted by one of Morgan's colleagues, who did not wish to be named, who has been involved in all the major discussions within the ICC.
"Two weeks ago there was an army mutiny in Bangladesh. After the Mumbai bombings, before Christmas in India, Pakistan cricketers are not allowed to play in the IPL. Also, remember that that competition had a big bomb attack during it last year in Jaipur. Colombo [the Sri Lankan capital] can be as bad as Pakistan. And never mind last week's attack on the Sri Lankan players, it should be remembered that Pakistan's former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was killed less than 18 months ago."
The insider also confirmed that debate had long been underway within the ICC about all forms of the international game being played in the Gulf. Why else would the sheikhs be investing so much money in cricket grounds?
"There will be three state-of-the-art cricket grounds at Sports City in Dubai, where Australian, Pakistani and English soil has already been imported for use," he says. "Abu Dhabi is ready right now. Don't think these conversations are only just starting. For the past two years the ICC have been thinking of expanding the game. The Middle East also has plenty of money – think of the recent Asian Games in Doha, where the facilities were built very quickly. There are contingency plans in place."
How realistic is the prospect of all forms of the international game being played in the Gulf region? "Why not? That's what we are have built these facilities for," says U Balasubramaniam, chief executive of Dubai's Sports City, whose director of sports business, Malcolm Thorpe, confirmed: "We've had conversations with every board of the Test playing nations."
Could the subcontinent nations play cricket in Abu Dhabi, which hosts Australia and Pakistan in a one-day series next month? "We're not here to exploit anyone's misfortune. But as far as we're concerned we'd say we have two excellent world-class venues. We're here for the cricket," says Dilwar Mani, president of the Abu Dhabi Cricket Association and brother of Ehsan Mani, a former ICC president.
"The facilities [in Abu Dhabi] are absolutely first class," says Morris, a view echoed by the ECB's chairman, Giles Clarke, who says: "Abu Dhabi and Dubai are perfectly viable options."
Thorpe describes what Sports City had on offer, thanks to huge investment by the Dubai royal family.
"Pakistan play Australia next month in the 25,000-seat stadium. The ICC Global Cricket Academy has Rod Marsh as its head, who is supported by Dayle Hadlee, brother of Sir Richard, and Mudassar Nazar. The academy has two ovals, indoor and outdoor nets, and a mix of different soils from England, Australia and Pakistan – the wicket for the stadium is from Pakistan. And the ICC's new offices, which open soon, are next door.
"The complex also has the Ernie Els golf club, a 15,000-seat multi-indoor arena similar to the O2, a 60,000-capacity facility for football, rugby and athletics, a field hockey stadium and a whole range of academies, including the Butch Harmon golf and Manchester United soccer schools." Sports City ranges over five square kilometres and, being purpose-built, gated and in a country with no history of terrorism, is very safe. "There will be a population of anything up to 60,000 living and working there. We are building a community around sport."
Investment in sport in the Gulf region has reached mind-boggling levels. Since the Dubai World Cup race meeting began in 1996, prize money has risen from $5m to more than $20m. Sports City has a fund of $4bn – Manchester United alone were paid $50m to locate a soccer school there – while in Qatar the cost of the Aspire football academy was $1.3bn. The European golf tour now stages more events in the Gulf than in England, and the season is built around the "Race to Dubai", venue for the season finale.
Morgan was careful to state that it would be "a mistake to think that the world outside the subcontinent is safe. I have a very clear visual memory of Australia being here in 2005 while I was at a one-day international in Leeds and bombs were going off in London.
"It is a good thing that England and India continued," he added of the series interrupted by the Mumbai attacks in which more than 170 people died.
But Morris, while also pointing to that positive experience, had reservations. "I can't paint the entire subcontinent under one brush. But today everyone is asking questions about playing in that region, full stop. Decisions should no longer be made on a political or commercial basis. Players make their choices based on safety." And the IPL? "People are asking pretty big questions over that. You need experts to do their reviews of safety. You have to be tapped into the advice each day."
The IPL's commissioner, Lalit Modi, is praying he can call in enough favours to persuade the Indian government to provide the level of security needed during a time when the potentially volatile national elections are taking place.
Andrew Flintoff, Pietersen, Morris and the wider cricket community will be dismayed to know that the IPL have so far refused two requests from Fica for a detailed plan of their security arrangements. The requests were made, before the Lahore atrocities, by Tim May, who says: "We recently conducted a survey of all the players who took part in the 2008 IPL and 83% said they wished to have an independent review. There have been significant incidents, including the Jaipur bombing [which nearly caused the match between Rajasthan Royals and the Bangalore Royal Challengers to be postponed]. Players have raised concerns about playing in those areas."
Those concerns could lead to some of the biggest changes to the cricket calendar since Test matches began.
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