Cricketers under fire.

The bloody daylight attack on Sri Lanka's cricket team in Pakistan has captured headlines in cricket-mad Australia. No surprise there. What does surprise me is the preponderance of knee-jerk, and therefore half-brained, commentary made by Aussie players and officials. Of course it was horrific -- a half dozen Pakistani security officials are dead and many Sri Lankan cricketers wounded. And of course it's damaging to the sporting world -- hell, it's damaging to the civilized world, or whatever's left of it that in that increasingly unstable area. But to say these dozen gunmen can cause the end of cricket tours to Pakistan or be responsible for 'the 9/11 of cricket' is to conflate this attack into something greater, and in the process reward cowardly madmen with the perverse glory they seek.