Close shave for Bangla players

Christchurch: The Bangladesh players had a lucky escape — had they arrived at the mosque a few minutes earlier, they could have been inside when the attacker started shooting. At 1.52pm, Espncricinfo journalist Mohammad Islam got a call from senior player Tamim Iqbal, who told him: “There’s shooting here, please save us.” Islam rushed towards the mosque and met the players — they were then trying to get to the safety of the cricket ground, Hagley Oval, on foot. “The players are talking about what they’ve seen — the blood, the bodies,” Islam wrote.

Safe at the ground after a 15-minute walk, the players were relieved but badly shaken. They were not allowed to leave the ground until 6.30pm. During that time, the decision to call off the tour had been taken. Khaled Mashud, the team manager, later said: “We are very lucky because we had a number of us, about 17 of us, in the bus. Soumya Sarkar was also there, and we were all heading to the mosque for prayers. Two players, Liton Das and Nayeem Hasan, and spin-bowling coach Sunil Joshi had stayed back at the team hotel.”

“We must have been about 50 yards from the mosque,” he added. “Had we reached even three or four minutes earlier, we probably would have been inside the mosque... Maybe for about 8-10 minutes, we were all inside the bus and were sitting with our heads bowed, just in case someone fires at us.”

Initially, they were not allowed to get out of the bus, but after some time they all decided that they must get out and escape on foot. “When we realised that the shooters could have inflicted more damage if they had found us inside the bus all at once, we took a collective decision to escape through the back gate,” Mashud said, and added: “Some of the boys inside the bus were crying as well, because they were all worried about how to get out of there.”

“...If the players had either gotten off the bus later or gone to the mosque earlier, it would have been difficult,” Mashud said.