With Pakistan racked by increasing violence by Islamic extremists intent on toppling the civilian Government, many had hoped a successful tour would prove to a doubtful international community that the country was still a functioning civil society.
The attack on the visiting players this week in the Punjabi capital of Lahore, as they travelled by convoy to the Gaddafi stadium for the third day of their second Test match, has struck at the heart of Pakistani society, offended a long-cherished tradition of hospitality and highlighted just how far the country has deteriorated.
As one Pakistani newspaper noted with despair this week: "Even our most esteemed guests are no longer safe in this country."
Armed with Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers and grenades, 12 masked gunmen attacked the convoy at a roundabout in the middle of the city, and battled a small number of security officers for 25 minutes before fleeing, apparently unhurried and unscathed, into a busy nearby market area. The ambush exposed gaping holes in Pakistani intelligence and security at a time when the West is counting on the nuclear-armed nation to act as a bulwark against the rising Taliban insurgency across the border in Afghanistan.
It has also crossed a line that many thought would never be breached, shattering the happy illusion that cricketers were immune to the terror threat that stalks every other citizen and visitor to Pakistan.
Eight people were killed and 19 injured -- including six Sri Lankan players and an assistant coach -- in Tuesday's brazen daylight ambush. While the team was promised "presidential-style security" -- a somewhat dubious undertaking given the country's history of political assassinations -- authorities in Pakistan have since admitted the attack was made possible through a series of stunning security lapses that left players and officials wide open to the well-planned ambush.
Angry officials traded accusations over the attack this week and Australian and British umpires caught in the ambush accused police and security officers of abandoning them like "sitting ducks" as the gunmen attacked.
Conspiracy theories have also abounded over the Pakistan team's crucial decision on Tuesday morning to leave the hotel later than usual, thereby splitting the teams' security detail.
The Opposition Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) party, led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, has claimed the central Government's decision last week to replace many senior police in Punjab province compromised the Sri Lankan team's security.
The shake-up followed the dismissal of Punjab chief minister Shabhaz Sharif, who along with his brother Nawaz was last week disqualified from elected office because of prior criminal convictions. The PML(N) says it tipped off the authorities about a possible threat to the Sri Lankan cricketers a month ago but was ignored.
"The security system in Pakistan under this regime has collapsed because this Government is too busy doing other things, they are too busy in their quest for power," Opposition politician Mushahid Hussain said on Thursday. "They should be held responsible."
With Sharif pledging to lead large anti-Government rallies from Lahore to the capital Islamabad next week, indicating months of political instability ahead, analysts say Pakistan is increasingly resembling a failed state.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack although many, including Punjab officials, have noted marked similarities between it and last November's co-ordinated attacks in Mumbai, blamed on Punjab-based terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba.
However, London's The Times reported yesterday that many of the men rounded up in a series of raids since the attack belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, outlawed militant groups with close links to al-Qa'ida.
Punjab Governor Salman Taseer claimed yesterday that the Government had identified the attackers but has so far refused to divulge their identity. Pakistan has a history of unsolved high-profile crimes, the most recent of which was the assassination of its own former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.
On his return to Britain this week, Test match referee Chris Broad savaged the Pakistani authorities over the attack, warning that Pakistan no longer had any friends in world cricket. "I feel so sorry for the cricketers and the cricket-mad public of Pakistan, but this is a bit of a death knell for cricket over there. I can't see it going on in the foreseeable future," he said.
New Zealand and Bangladesh have cancelled upcoming tours, a devastating blow to the average Pakistani for whom cricket is akin to a second religion.
To say Pakistan is a cricket-obsessed country is almost to understate the role the sport plays there: cricket has been credited with averting a war between Pakistan and India. It has been used to settle old interstate rivalries within the country. And in recent times, as extremists have impinged more and more heavily on the lives of Pakistanis, cricket had been the one element that linked the country to its neighbours and the West through something other than the war on terror.
As Pakistani columnist Asha'ar Rehman wrote in Dawn newspaper this week: "Pakistanis do not love cricket, they live it -- it is cricket they have been finding refuge in whenever the news coverage of politics and war on terror has become intolerable."
Analysts say this week's terror strike can only harden the resolve of the US administration, as it mulls a new diplomatic and military strategy for the restive South Asia region, that it must play a larger role in helping Pakistan contain terrorism within and across its borders.
But whether it is enough to galvanise Pakistanis, a people cowed by violence, into an uprising against the malignant terror forces operating within their country remains to be seen. If last month's dubious peace deal in the Swat Valley, which traded the end of militant violence in the former tourist region 160km from Islamabad for the imposition of sharia law, was a geographical red line crossed, then the attack in Lahore was surely a psychological one.
But acts of terrorism are now so frequent that "Pakistanis routinely slice their much-taxed sympathy into those few that matter and the millions that don't", US-based Pakistani lawyer Rafia Zakaria wrote last month, quoting one Karachi resident who said: "I look down, do my work, pick my children up from school and don't worry too much about what is happening. It's the only way I can survive here." Lahore resident Imran Saeed Khan told Inquirer that while the attack has had a devastating affect on Lahoris -- a resilient community that sees itself as the nucleus of political and cultural influence in the country -- successive military regimes had brutalised most Pakistanis into silence.
"Mostly people in Pakistan are supporters of enlightment and liberalism. They hate the terrorists," Khan said. "Unfortunately they're cowards. They lived under military rule and those rules were brutal. So they have lost their will to speak up."
Pakistanis had also lost faith in their Government which had not only failed to protect its citizens but added to their misery through indiscriminate strikes on terrorist strongholds along the Afghan border that have claimed lives of thousands of civilians, he added.
The current civilian Government, led by Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari, is widely viewed within and outside the country as one of the most US-friendly governments in Pakistan's 61-year history.
But many ordinary Pakistanis resent its co-operation with the US, particularly over drone attacks against Islamic militants within Pakistan, and an escalation of American influence there can only fuel further anger among a community that believes its Western ally brought the war on terror to its doors.
Pakistan has been slipping further and further into isolation as the Government's complicity with the US has prompted al-Qa'ida and Taliban-linked militants, once restricted to the northwest tribal areas, to fan out into major cities across the country.
Foreign investment has already plummeted in direct proportion to the increasing terror attacks, as has tourism. The diplomatic community has also shrunk in the past three years as many embassies and high commissions have downgraded their presence.
Most analysts predict that Tuesday's strike can only further isolate Pakistan at a time when it is most crucial that it remains engaged with the West.
South Asia senior fellow with the International Institute for Strategic Policy Rahul Roy-Chaudhury tells Inquirer the attack "plays into the hands of the terrorists". "The greatest implications of the attack are for Pakistani stability and security and that's the foremost challenge to the Pakistani state," he says.
"The terrorists, whatever their stripe, they strike at key assets in Pakistan. Whether it's the attack on a rally for Benazir Bhutto in Karachi, or her assassination in Rawalpindi, last year's attack on the Marriott in Islamabad or this week's strike on Lahore, the message is that everyone is vulnerable."
The most worrying aspect of the attack, he adds, was the terrorists' ability to melt away and the lack of intelligence from within the community since Tuesday, not withstanding the $US126,000 ($195,000) reward for information leading to their arrests. "That to me indicates they have certain levels of support within Lahore which should be of concern to Pakistan intelligence and government."
That would be less surprising in cities like Karachi and Peshawar, which have become strongholds for Islamic extremists, but the fact that it happened in Lahore suggests a far greater level of infiltration by terrorists than previously believed. As the traditional recruiting ground for the military and political establishment, Punjab has always been considered the country's most secure and well-functioning state. That can no longer be said to be the case. As Khan said yesterday: "We had always thought that Lahore was a peaceful and secure city, but they're knocking on our doors now."
