There remain reservations about how successful England’s expedition to Bangladesh was on the field, but as they arrive safely in Mumbai for the second leg of their tour, one man is entitled to look back on the first with satisfaction.
Reg Dickason, England’s security adviser, is the man whose advice was the single largest factor in the tour to Bangladesh going ahead and there has been no argument that the security arrangements for the players – and the press, who were incorporated unofficially into the plan along with a few stray supporters – were successful.
Dickason is an affable, gruff Australian, who was once a policeman in Melbourne. For the past two decades he has been a security expert well trusted within cricket as well as an increasing number of other sports. If anything untoward had happened in Bangladesh his reputation would have been badly tainted. But now the trust remains.
“It’s all gone very smoothly,” he said.
“We’ve been very happy with the effort the Bangladesh government and their board have put in. We were fortunate that we had an opportunity to see the roll out at the Under-19 World Cup [when everyone turned up except Australia]. We thought if they can replicate that for the England team we’ll be pretty happy, and they have.”
The security on hand in Bangladesh was very visible. Occasionally it seemed excessive to the layman, most obviously the convoy between the hotel and the ground or airport when the roads were cleared for the buses carrying the teams and the press. In cities such as Dhaka and Chittagong that was a major operation as well as a major luxury since the journey time through streets that are usually extremely congested was slashed dramatically.
Dickason said about 2,000 police a day were allocated to the security plan in Dhaka, 1,400 in Chittagong. It was a little eerie to arrive at a cricket ground to be surrounded by so many armed guards as well as men with guns stationed on nearby rooftops, but Dickason does not believe this had an adverse effect on the players.
“When you enter a different environment after two or three days it becomes the norm. There were huge convoys and when you get off the plane there was a huge security presence. But after a few days it just becomes part of the landscape.”
The success of the security arrangements – and the tour – may enhance the prospect of more home Tests for Bangladesh. Recently Australia declined to travel there but in the past fortnight Sean Carroll, Cricket Australia’s security manager, has been around to witness the arrangements. “They came and saw what you saw,” Dickason said. “In 20 years I’ve been doing this it’s probably the most comprehensive security roll-out that I’ve seen.”
Who knows what Eoin Morgan and Alex Hales, the two notable absentees from the England team, would have made of it all? Dickason said he does not know the reasons why they chose not to come: “They’re adults and entitled to make their own decisions. We had a team meeting, but it wasn’t one to convince people. It was just to lay out the facts.”
Although the Bangladesh tour was an undoubted success on just about every front Dickason is wary of suggesting that this will change the prospects of Pakistan hosting international sides in the foreseeable future. “It would be unfair to compare those environments; they are markedly different. We’ll always keep an open mind, but something has to change fundamentally there.”
Dickason’s work this winter is not finished. There are security concerns in India, just as everywhere else. “It’ll be similar in India but a different layout. It was very overt in Bangladesh but it won’t be in India. The road clearances that we got there are usually reserved for heads of state. We probably won’t get that in India.”
The cricketing challenge may be more overt against India. Their strength on their home turf is obvious to all. A snippet of encouragement for England’s tourists comes with the announcement of their Test squad, however. They have some injury concerns. Rohit Sharma, a heavy run-scorer in the recent series against New Zealand, is absent from the squad because of a thigh problem. So, too, is the colourful opening batsman Shikhar Dhawan and another opener, KL Rahul.
So England will be confronted by a familiar figure at the top of the order, the more prosaic veteran Gautam Gambhir. The swing bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar is also recovering from a hamstring injury but India’s reservoir of pacemen is somewhat deeper than that of Bangladesh.
-The Guardian
