Pakistan's success in the Twenty20 cricket World Cup must rank as one of sports' more timely victories. For a state that is supposed to be at war with itself, failing and in danger of fragmentation there cannot be a sweeter way to hit back.

Younus Khan who led his unfancied team comes from the North West Frontier Province, as does Shahid Afridi whose explosive batting took Pakistan to an eight-wicket win over Sri Lanka, another nation wracked by decades of civil war, but coming out of it.

The NWFP is the frontline of the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda that has so blighted the nation, left it divided, bleeding and saddled with a huge refugee problem. Indeed Khan said the World Cup was a gift to the people of Pakistan.

Cricinfo compared Pakistan's success to a newly-reunified South Africa's victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup, saying there had not been a more timely win since then.

Younus also said  cricketing nations must resume playing in his troubled, but cricket-mad nation.

"Everybody must come to Pakistan. We need a home test series. How can we attract the youngsters? Players muct come to Pakistan."

Is the world ready to reconsider? Will India, no stranger to militancy itself, soften up? The 50-over World Cup scheduled for 2011 has been taken away from Pakistan, and is to be played now in only India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The ICC Champions Trophy that it was scheduled to host last year was shifted out, and Australia, New Zealand and England have refused to play there.

Indeed Pakistan's cricket authorities have challenged the decision to drop them from the host nations of the 2011 World Cup and  it has renewed a call to its co-Asian hosts to support its bid to hold the tournament.

Standing up for cricket in Pakistan may also be  a way to challenge the forces of darkness that is the Taliban, argues Tunku Varadarajan in a piece for Forbes. The victory was a monumental boost to a nation drained of all morale.

And cricket, he says "offers an alternative vision of civilization with which Pakistanis can contrast the viciously bleak program of the Taliban."

The Pakistani state may be facing its most serious threat since its birth more than six decades ago, begging the question of who controls the militants who are expanding their influence across the country.

The question has arisen in the light of escalating violence inside Pakistan including the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team despite a call reported to have been made by the leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, urging Pakistani militants to stop fighting at home and instead focus on Afghanistan.

The Guardian reported that Mullah Omar said in a letter to the commanders of the Pakistani Taliban that: “Attacks on the Pakistani security forces and killing of fellow Muslims by the militants in the tribal areas and elsewhere in Pakistan is bringing a bad name to mujahedeen and harming the war against the U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.”

Pakistani journalist and author Ahmed Rashid wrote in the Globe and Mail that Mullah Omar also said in the letter that “If anybody really wants to wage jihad, he must fight the occupation forces inside Afghanistan.” The Taliban chief is presumably concerned about getting reinforcements in Afghanistan to offset the increase of U.S. forces in the country.

But his call seems to have been ignored as the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore showed. It was followed shortly after by the bombing of the mausoleum of a 17th century Pashto poet outside Peshawar.

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Conspiracy theories have filled a void in Pakistan that opened up as soon as the dozen gunmen who attacked the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team made a leisurely getaway  without any apparent casualties after a 25 minute gun battle.

Since the attack on Tuesday, Pakistani authorities have yet to reveal where the investigation was going,  despite Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi saying “important  leads” had been established.

There has been finger pointing in the Pakistani media in various directions, but the sympathies of the indiviual reporter or media group have to be examined in every case. Only the conspiracy theorists have answers to who could have done it and why.
 
    WHO ARE THE SUSPECTS?
    Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani jihadi group blamed for the slaughter of nearly 170 people in Mumbai last November. There were some similiarities, but LeT hasn’t got any history of attacking inside Pakistan.

Maybe LeT fears the Pakistan government, having already arrested a handful of LeT members named in the Mumbai case, seriously aims to put it out of
business and wanted to send a warning, destabilise a Pakistani government it thinks is soft on India and Kashmir. Maybe it is worried the old  friends in Pakistani intelligence are abandoning them.

But the rationale for targetting Sri Lankan cricketers, in Lahore, a city where the LeT has moved easily in the past, is hard to see.

 Another Sunni militant group with far stronger ties to al Qaeda is Lashkar-e-Janghvi. Like LeT, LeJ is a Punjabi group.

But LeJ has provided footsoldiers for al Qaeda operations, and has been involved in spectacular attacks, most recently the  suicide truck boming of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad last September, which killed 55 people.

As the Daily Times notes, the involvement of LeJ, or another group in al Qaeda’s thrall makes sense on some levels. But the question of why the Sri  Lankans were targeted is hard to square unless the answer is that it could have been anybody. The attack has certainly achieved an  al Qaeda objective in terms of ruining Pakistan’s international image and undermining faith in the government.

 The Pakistani Taliban also have ties to al Qaeda and have been blamed for the assassination of former prime minister  Benazir Bhutto, though there’s a surfeit of conspiracy theories around her slaying too.

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It's just not cricket.

Ducking for cover as bullets replaced bouncers... players evacuated in a military helicopter that lands right next to a 22-yard pitch... the same strip at Lahore's Gaddafi Stadium that saw Thilan Samaraweera score a double century the previous evening.

Samaraweera was hit on his leg during an audacious attack by armed militants on a convoy taking his team to the venue, an attack that left six cricketers injured and more than half-a-dozen Pakistani security personnel killed.

The world of cricket will never be the same again.

More worrying is the fate of Pakistani cricket. Tours to Pakistan were already a trickle with teams like Australia refusing to travel.

The matches against Sri Lanka came after more than a year of near pariah status. And even this tour was hastily arranged after India pulled out post-26/11.

After months of shadow boxing and pulled punches, the ICC had to suspend international cricket in Pakistan.

Tuesday's attack also raised serious doubts about Pakistan's chances of co-hosting the 2011 cricket world cup.

Authorities were already considering five alternate venues for the Champions Trophy.

The cricketing fraternity has expressed solidarity with both the Pakistani and Sri Lankan players. They were both shocked and saddened.

They also say the game must go on, but where?

When will Pakistan get to host an international cricket match again?

Some like former fast bowler Sarfraz Nawaz are worried that other cricketing nations might even refuse to invite Pakistan over fears of the threat of terror trailing the team all the way to their doorsteps.

It will indeed be sad if international cricket is denied to Pakistan, not just to the players but to the public too.

It's a game that has many a time been a metaphor for peace between India and Pakistan. The sport has been held hostage for that very reason too.

But diplomacy is a game played in the corridors of power, an arena far removed from the subcontinental dustbowls and narrow bylanes that has unearthed many a gem that has embellished the game of cricket.

What are the words that spring to mind when you talk about Pakistani cricketers?

Talented, temperamental, explosive and, more than anything else, unpredictable.

Hanif Mohammed, Mushtaq Mohammed, Imran Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, Abdul Qadir, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Inzamam-ul Haq, Mohammed Yousuf, Younis Khan -- the list is impressive and rather long.

What makes these players churn out performances which swing from the sublime to the ridiculous to supreme craft remains one of the mysteries of the world of cricket.

Unlike England or Australia or even India, many who represented Pakistan on the world stage emerged despite the system in a country which today is bereft of a proper domestic cricket calender.

Today, the question is whether that mystique will be lost to the world, if not forever, at least for the foreseeable future.

And will the country itself be pushed into further isolation?

A billion fans in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka -- all test nations -- have used the game of cricket as a balm for their myriad problems.

That myth was exploded on Tuesday after gunmen wounded six Sri Lankan players after firing heavy weapons as their team bus wound its way towards the Gaddafi stadium in Lahore to start the third day's play in the second test.

While the players apparently escaped without serious injuries, at least eight Pakistanis lost their lives and a local umpire was critically wounded.

Cricket will never be the same again in the region.

Sri Lanka's tour had itself come in the shadow of violence after the Indian government, its bilateral relations with its neighbour nosediving after the deadly November militant attacks in Mumbai, refused permission for its team to tour Pakistan in January-February.

The island team stepped into the breach, with Pakistan desperate for test cricket and money, having gone over a year without five-day games.

Former skipper Inzamam-ul Haq betrayed the helplessness of cricket administrators in Pakistan, unable to believe that militants, to draw global attention, could have targeted their favourite game.

"Such an attack on a sub-continent team means other teams will simply refuse to come," he told a television channel.

Inzamam's comments showed the realisation that the attackers had wiped out cricket's healing touch in one go. 

Even at the peak of the ethnic strife in Sri Lanka, cricket teams or even media covering matches never felt threatened, although bombs have gone off in capital Colombo leaving teams such as New Zealand and South Africa shaken and abandoning their tours.

Players have never been targets and many were confident the kind of deadly attacks on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics would never be repeated.

So has the attack finally dashed Pakistan's hopes of staying on as a joint-host of the 2011 World Cup alongside India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka?

Pakistan seemed to nurse hopes even when the International Cricket Council (ICC) postponed the Champions Trophy last year with five of the eight teams set to boycott due to security fears. They then shifted the second most important one-day event in February out of Pakistan.

Although the influential Indian cricket board has largely stood by their Pakistan counterparts, attacks such as the one in Mumbai and Lahore have meant governments and security experts of the ICC have taken charge.

With teams such as Australia, New Zealand and England already refusing to travel to Pakistan, will the attack be the last straw for sub-continent teams in the years to come?

It looks like Pakistan cricket is set for a long winter.

PHOTO: Sri Lankan cricket team members prepare to board a Pakistani military helicopter at the Gaddafi stadium after the shooting in Lahore March 3, 2009. REUTERS/Syed Mujtaba

For a slideshow of photos on the shooting, please click here.

Scenes of bloodshed on the streets of Lahore after gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan team bus instantly ended any hopes Pakistan might have held of coaxing the cricketing world back to its grounds.

Repercussions from Tuesday's incident that left six players wounded and five policemen dead may also be felt through the entire region for years to come (read our main report here and click here for reaction).

Security arrangements for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, to be hosted in neighbouring India, are certain to be re-examined and beefed up, while there will be renewed concerns about the merits of staging part of the 2011 Cricket World Cup in Pakistan.

Almost all of the world's top cricket nations have already refused to tour Pakistan because of fears about the safety of their players.

Australia have not toured Pakistan since 1998 and were joined by England, New Zealand and South Africa in boycotting last year's Champions Trophy in Pakistan.

The International Cricket Council agreed to move the tournament to Sri Lanka, but are already having second thoughts because it is during the monsoon season.

India were supposed to be touring Pakistan now but pulled out in the wake of recent militant attacks in Mumbai. Only Sri Lanka agreed to take their place.

India and Sri Lanka, co-hosts for the 2011 World Cup, have not been immune to attacks on their soil but Tuesday's incident will surely heighten concerns about staging any events in the region.

Australia and West Indies both refused to play matches in Sri Lanka during the 1996 World Cup after bombings in Colombo while New Zealand cut short tours of Pakistan and Sri Lanka foe similar reasons.

England suspended their tour of India last year after the attacks on Mumbai, which killed about 170 people, but agreed to return on the promise of tightened security.

Cricket is the most popular sport on the sub-continent but the effects are already being felt in other sports.

Hockey's Champions Trophy has already been moved away from Pakistan and tennis officials ordered increased security at this year's Chennai Open and the future of sport in the region now faces a bleak reassessment.

You have to be living in Pakistan, or have gone through the “madness” of the last year or so to understand the despondency that is likely to be caused by the International Cricket Council’s decision to postpone next month’s Champions trophy because of security concerns, writes columnist Osman Samiuddin.  

Cricket is close to most people’s hearts in South Asia, and for Pakistan to lose the game’s second most important tournament after the World Cup hurts. Yes, there is a war out there in the northwest,  yes there are suicide bombings, and in the middle of all this, there is political uncertainty that can turn ugly very quickly, as has happened so often in the past.  

But do you shut out the country? Or stand behind it, especially if it goes out of its way to ensure that no harm would come to the players, no matter the multiple threats that ordinary Pakistanis face each day. Australia, as the Pakistanis said , hasn’t toured the country in ten years, so how it ever going to remove its negative perceptions unless it pays a visit?

As late as last week the ICC said it was satisfied with the security arrangements. But then, five of the eight nations  due to take part in the tournament said they wouldn’t be able to send their teams. Perhaps the one silver lining was India and Sri Lanka held out, refusing to join the boycott, which isn’t suprising, given that both suffer from the menace of violent attacks in varying degrees.

One writer said Pakistan was a soft target for the “ancient powers” of cricket, Australia and England,  and that they wouldn’t treat India the same way because of its economic heft.

It’s not an easy call to make. Lives are important, and these are superstars we are talking about. If the players don’t feel confident about their well-being and are going to live in fear, can they really focus on the game ? 

Pakistan has just moved to daylight saving time, the first country in South Asia to try this to stave off a crippling energy shortage. But will it work ? Or will it make life a bit more difficult for people travelling across South Asia where most countries have their own national clocks, sometimes minutes apart, largely as a mark of national sovereignty more than anything else?

 Opinion in the media and on the blogs is divided over Pakistan’s decision to move clocks by one hour until August, with some pointing out that this had been tried
out in the past and it didn’t really work.

“People were  confused and were always referring to dual timings, saying Musharraf time is 4 p.m. but actually it is 3 p.m,” wrote Shahid Sohail in a comment on All Things Pakistan. Prayer times were affected and there was chaos until the authorities withdrew the measure.

Another reader on the same blog wasn’t sure what difference it would make in a city like Karachi where businesses don’t start until 12 p.m, itself a problem.

Pakistanis must cooperate in the national interest, the government said, perhaps mindful of the past experience. The power shortage is indeed so serious that there have been riots in recent months.  There is a shortage of 4,500 mw at the moment, forcing recurrent power cuts across the country.

Still, the idea of Pakistan now half an hour ahead of India - when it actually should be behind given its location to the west - adds to the chronological confusion. 

The Los Angeles Times said it’s like saying California is ahead of Utah. But then scientific logic hasn’t traditionally set times in South Asia. Nepal wanted to be on its own time zone, rather than live in Big Brother India’s lengthening shadows, so it chose to move its clock by 15 minutes.

Sri Lanka, which was on the same clock as India, moved half an hour ahead, which was again seen as asserting its identity, But the Tamil Tigers fighting for an independent homeland refused to make the switch, emphasising, in turn, their distinctiveness.

So the tiny island which has been tearing itself apart in a 25-year civil war ended up with two different sets of times. They used to call it  Jaffna time in the north as different from the clock in the rest of the island. Ultimately the government moved back the clock and today they are on the same time zone as India.

And if your head isn’t spinning by now, try Bangladesh  which sits in a geographical location such that it has India on both its western and eastern borders. But that hasn’t stopped it from having its Bangladesh Standard Time half an hour ahead of the Indian clock. So you have a situation where if you travelled east from Bangladesh to India’s northeast you would have to turn your watch back by 30 minutes,  so you actually end up gaining time while travelling east.

Mental calisthenics ?   

India, Pakistan and even tiny Sri Lanka have all ignored U.S. concerns, and have hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over the past two days. It is a fleeting visit with less than five hours scheduled in Delhi, but it seems like a carefully calibrated piece of diplomacy tiptoeing around the elephant in the room.
 
For, as relations go, India and Pakistan have become bound up with the United States in ways that would have been unthinkable not very long ago. Islamabad is a frontline ally in Washington’s war on al Qaeda and the Taliban, India a growing strategic partner with whom it is pushing a far-reaching civilian nuclear deal that gives it de facto recognition as a nuclear state.

So what’s this dance with Iran, accused by the United States of sponsoring terrorism and seeking to develop nuclear weapons ? Some of it is down to economics : Iran holds the key to India’s energy  insecurity, as a piece in the Asia Times argues.

With oil prices skyrocketing, India’s thirst for cheaper imported gas has acquired a greater urgency than before and if this means jumpstarting the 15-year-old proposal to pipe gas from Iran through Pakistan, now estimated to cost $7.5 billion, so be it. Pakistan too needs the natural gas to meet its growing energy demand, as also the millions of dollars it will earn in transit fees.

And if history is any lesson, the “pipeline of peace” could promote security in the region with the costs of a conflict between India and Pakistan that much higher.

But is there also a desire to assert or rather be seen to be asserting independence of action in hosting Ahmadinejad at a time when tensions are rising again over its nuclear ambitions ?

Pakistan has a new civilian government which has pledged to pursue a more independent course, including in the fight against al Qaeda, than followed by President Pervez Musharraf.

India’s government is under pressure from its communist allies who think it has gone too far in seeking warmer ties with America and risks losing its independence of action. In any case, New Delhi has been acutely sensitive of being seen as anything other than a fiercely independent nation.  

What of Sri Lanka ? Perhaps the island has had enough of lectures on human right violations and veiled threats to hold back assistance if it continues to seek a military solution to the insurgency by Tamil Tiger rebels. Iran will probably abjure such admonitions.