Indian cricket officials downplayed security concerns surrounding their Twenty20 league next month after the Sri Lankan board said it would review the situation before allowing its players to participate. Security fears around the tournament, which attracts a large number of international players has intensified following an attack on the Sri Lanka team bus in Lahore, Pakistan, this month that left six players and a coach wounded. All the top Sri Lankan cricketers, including newly-appointed captain Kumar Sangakkara and vice captain Muttiah Muralitharan, are contracted to one of the eight Indian franchises. “I don't think security is an issue at all,” league chairman Lalit Modi told Reuters on Thursday. The second edition, planned from April 10 to May 24, has already hit a roadblock after the Indian government asked the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for revised match dates to avoid a clash of dates with the general election. The Ministry of Home Affairs told organizers to reschedule match dates for a second time because regional governments said they would find it tough to spare security forces that would be busy with the month-long poll starting on April 16. The newly appointed chairman of Sri Lanka Cricket's interim administration raised security concerns at a news conference in Colombo on Wednesday. “We have to talk to the players and then with the BCCI on security related issues before sending them to India for the tournament,” D.S. de Silva told the media. Samaraweera eyes return Thilan Samaraweera, perhaps the most in-form batsman in world cricket until he was shot in the leg when his Sri Lankan team was attacked in Pakistan, said Thursday he is aiming to return soon and to hit more double centuries. The 32-year-old Samaraweera was released this week from hospital just over two weeks after the March 3 attack in Lahore killed six policemen and two civilians and left the batsman struggling to know if his career was over. “The first five days in the hospital were terrible. I could not move and I did not know what to think,” he said in an interview. But Samaraweera said he was lucky because the bullet went through his hamstring and did not hit any bones or nerves. Samaraweera was among seven Sri Lankan players and a British assistant coach injured when more than a dozen gunmen used rifles, grenades and rocket launchers to attack a team convoy on its way to Gaddafi Stadium for a Test against Pakistan. “The last 10 months I was doing very well and then this happened,” said Samaraweera, who had the bullet removed from his left thigh after being flown back to Sri Lanka on an emergency flight. The day before the attack, Samaraweera had notched his second successive Test double century, scoring 214. In the first Test in Karachi, he had made 231. That made Samaraweera just the seventh batsman after Walter Hammond, Don Bradman, Vinod Kambli, teammate Kumar Sangakkara, Ricky Ponting and Graeme Smith to score successive Test double centuries. “I hope I can do that again,” Samaweera said.
