You have feel for the average citizens of Pakistan. It is not their fault that their nation has lost the rights to hosting 16th World Cup games in 2011.

They deserved better than this but those nightmare street scenes of Lahore on March 3 and caught on television are all too indelible to forget. Masked gunmen roaming the streets, looking for victims and Pakistan authorities trying to blame others while their own were senselessly slaughtered, collateral victims in an already dysfunctional security system.

Security had been so disorganised that it allowed the perpetrators of the premeditated ambush to escape unimpeded in side streets. What has been done about trying to find those killers of six policemen and two civilians? Or who attempted to kill the Sri Lankan players and match officials? Nothing, it seems.

Ijaz Butt and his discredited Pakistan Cricket Board cronies should have been warned how those horrendous incidents had seriously jeopardised their World Cup 2011 plans. Instead of transparency, they used jingoistic vernacular to hide the flaws.

Little wonder, faced with such overwhelming evidence that the International Cricket Council removed from the Pakistan Cricket Board the rights to host.

While the PCB chairman Butt now tenaciously clings to power, his tenure has been seriously disfigured by a series of disasters. It would not, therefore, come as a surprise if he is booted from the position by a government already under growing pressures from Islamofascist groups and their fanatical followers.

As the Pakistan team prepare in Dubai for a series of limited overs internationals against Australia, their board had faced increasing pressure over the security problems that they are having a problem in handling. They couldn’t take either the honest criticism from match referee Chris Broad or umpires Simon Taufel and Steve Davis.

If you would recall, Yahaluweni, how on March 9 these files had a headline how "Butt and Javed Miandad dance to a flawed security tune." Such has been the hubris from that episode that Butt has been told how his administration of the PCB has been a disaster. Not only has it lacked professional guidance, the incompetence of the Lahore security measures as opposed to those in Karachi, displayed a show of arrogance.

It not only left an international cricket team exposed, but also officials of the ICC in Broad, Taufel and Davis. Not only is it likely to happen again, but suicide bombers have become almost an everyday event in Pakistan as the government grapples with religious opposition to its rule of law.

Broad’s ‘sitting ducks’ report to the ICC along with Bayliss’ shocking revelations on the difference of the team’s security between Karachi and Lahore, would have not helped the PCB’s cause either. There are now 22 months to the start of the next World Cup; to remove it from Pakistan now makes sense than to wait until six months before the event and find that a foolproof security system is still not in place because of turmoil within the country.

Whatever plan the four Asian nations were supposed to have in place to protect Pakistan and their hosting sixteen of games, including a semi final, of the 2011 World Cup were brushed aside by factual evidence, not a presentation of a shaky pyramid financial style scheme.

As with the second edition of the Indian Premier League, the solution appears to be temporary refugee status. This time the United Arab Emirates offer is about the only viable answer to Pakistan’s problems of hosting any CWC011 games. It is a sad state of affairs, for as my late friend Bob Woolmer explained, the streets of most Pakistan cities and towns are full of youngsters playing the game.

The Pakistan public would want to see their players and heroes in action and are now denied this opportunity. Yet, paradoxically, if the 1996 World Cup is a guide, they would turn up only for Pakistan games. Memory is of sitting watching Gary Kirsten score a brilliant century in a near empty stadium as South Africa played the United Arab Emirates (unfairly dismissed at the time by some as Pakistan A).

There is though a deeper concern about the future of the game in Pakistan; indeed, any sport that has international links. An email from a long-time colleague in Karachi suggests a growing fear that religious fanatics are adding to the problem. His concern is how children in some schools are being targeted by extremist Sunni followers telling them that playing cricket is wrong as it doesn’t allow time for prayer. Unless the militants are reeled in, what will emerge as Pakistan is another matter.

Where the ICC have erred is their decision to ignore the Indian Cricket League’s credentials. This on-going battle is eventually going to end up in court, and as in the case of the Kerry Packer imbroglio, creates a problem for the ICC as well as the bullies who run the Indian board.

Also interesting is how, as South Africa remained at the head of the ICC limited overs log after a 3-2 series win over injury-hit Australia, reality has set in over a question of the legality of Johan Botha’s action.

A key player to South Africa’s limited-overs cause, the absence of Botha was felt at The Wanderers Friday night where Australia scored far too many runs after Graeme Smith, on winning the toss, decided to field first.

Sure, there were a couple of dodgy umpiring decisions, but…hey, no one’s perfect in this world. But the reporting of Botha’s action doesn’t come as a surprise. And why they won’t admit it, it is also the reason he was left out of the side for the final game of what has been a four and a half month period of keen, competitive matches between the two nations.

More remarkable, considering the bickering, aggressive history of the two teams in 2001/02 and 2005/06, this has been a remarkably friction free LOI tournament, if not tour. The players went about their game, as all good professionals should with Ricky Ponting and Smith leading by example.

In all honesty, after the action was cited again, he could not be allowed to play at The Wanderers. It would be adding an extra problem, no matter the positive jingoism emerging from Mickey Arthur who is convinced Botha’s action will pass muster when tested in Perth, Western Australia in a couple of days.

Yet, it makes you wonder how he has escaped so long when playing in Australia in the series won 4-1 that edged the tourists to the top of the ICC rankings. It seems that one set of umpires were leaving it for the others to do the citing, and possibly rather that it be in South Africa than Australia where accusations may have been made of biased decisions by umpires and match referees.

There is a good reason for this after being cited in 2006. This was on Test debut in Sydney in January. While he had worked on his action, there was some doubt whether it still met the required 15 degree’s flexation limit needed by the ICC to pass a bowler.

The legality of Botha’s action first raised questions while on tour of Sri Lanka in September 2005 in the two A team ‘Tests’ in Colombo and Dambulla. It is known that the four umpires ‘noted the action. Further concerns were raised as well during the triangular series with New Zealand being involved.

Sir Richard Hadlee, the Kiwis team’s manager and the coach Mark O’Donnell felt that there were certain deliveries Botha bowled that were above the 15 degree flexation allowed. In the final against the Kiwis, further questions were raised during the six overs he delivered.

Sri Lanka A team management had first raised concerns after watching Botha bowl in the nets before the first tour match. However, as there is no avenue for team managers or coaches to voice an opinion privately or publicly, Botha carried on playing with his suspect action.

Views of the Sri Lanka panel of umpires who stood in the two ‘Tests’ and the triangular limited overs series were said to be contained in a report and this would be sent to Sri Lanka Cricket. The recommendation is that it be forwarded to the ICC for action.

Whether this is the case is uncertain, for when questions were later asked by certain Sri Lanka A team management members if the report had been finished, the comments received were how it was being translated into English as it was part of a report in Sinhalese. This type of obfuscation is often used a delaying tactic by officials as it is considered not to be important enough. With the failure to do anything , Botha’s action not brought to the attention of the ICC and time was lost to remedy the action.

Two months after the India tour of November 2005 where the action was unofficially queried more than once, the bubble burst at the Sydney Cricket Ground.

It was left to Chris Broad, the match referee in that series with umpires Aleem Daar and Billy Bowden, along with the TV monitor umpire Robert Parry, who felt Botha’s action in bowling the doosra and faster ball transgressed the allowed fifteen degrees of flexation. Asoka De Silva, Brian Jerling and Rudi Koertzen cited these two deliveries in the Port Elizabeth game.

The Botha issue is not going to disappear in a hurry as he fails to spin the ball or take wickets when bowls normally and the new tests in Perth need to sort this out.

(email: lbwbambrose@gmail.com)