Emotional Kiwi skipper tells of Karachi bomb horror

Half of the New Zealand squad were missing when the players assembled moments after a bomb exploded outside their Karachi hotel on Wednesday, captain Stephen Fleming said on Friday.

The bomb blast occurred 15 minutes before the Kiwis were due to travel to the ground for the start of the second and final Test against Pakistan. A decision was made to abort the tour after 14 people, including 11 French defence technicians, were killed.

"I saw things people shouldn't see," an emotional Fleming told reporters on the New Zealand squad's arrival back in Auckland.

"I saw one guy with a limb missing walking around. It was harrowing and the noise he was making was horrific. Then, when we got outside, half the team was missing. That was pretty tough to take."

Stephen Fleming

The bomb went off alongside a navy bus parked near two major city hotels.

Fleming fought to hold back the tears as he described the carnage. He had been with a group of seven players having breakfast.

"The explosion is something you can't describe," he said. "It reverberated through your whole body."

All the New Zealand players were safe but physio Dayle Shackel, who was already on the team bus, received a cut to his elbow as a window on the vehicle shattered.

FULL HORROR

New Zealand Cricket (NZC) are to make counsellors available to the squad. Fleming said the players had been safe in the team environment after the experience, but that the full horror of the events could come out when they went their separate ways.

Fleming said aborting the tour was the correct thing to do. "It was definitely the right decision," he said. "The team thanks Martin Snedden (the NZC chief executive) and the Pakistan Cricket Board for making the arrangements so quickly."

He said the important thing now was for the players to get back with their loved ones and return to normal before considering the future.

New Zealand are due to leave for a tour of the West Indies in three weeks, but Fleming said it was too early to say if any of the players would pull out of that trip.

"After we've been through what we have been through, there hasn't been a lot of time to consider the West Indies," he said.

Snedden said the NZC would allow all the players to spend the next few days to settle back into their normal routines. "Then we will start talking and listening, more importantly, about the coming issues like the tour of the West Indies," he said.

New Zealand were whitewashed 3-0 in the one-day series in Pakistan and heavily beaten by an innings and 324 runs in the first Test in Lahore.

Also read:
- NZ cancels Pak tour after Karachi blast
- Blast in Karachi; 10 foreigners killed

Mail Cricket Editor