Less than three months after their team bus came under terrorist gunfire in Lahore, members of the Sri Lankan cricket team have withdrawn from a scheduled visit to Oxford due to security concerns.
Muttiah Muralidharan, Kumar Sangakkara and team manager Brendon Kuruppu informed the Oxford Union debating society on Friday they feared a backlash after a front-page story in The Times in which it was claimed that 20,000 Tamil civilians had been killed in recent hostilities between government troops and LTTE.
The Sri Lankans arrived in England this week ahead of the World Twenty20; their first international assignment since the attack outside the Gadaffi Stadium, which claimed the lives of eight security and transport personnel and wounded seven players and coaching staff. Muralitharan, who is himself a Tamil, had been due, along with Sangakkara and Kuruppu, to deliver an oration at the Oxford Union - following in the footsteps of US presidents and other heads of state - but the visit was scrapped due to uneasiness over security arrangements.
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