New Delhi: Condemning the terrorist attack in Punjab's Dinanagar town, BJP MP and Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Anurag Thakur on Monday said "cricket and terror cannot go hand in hand", thereby placing a question mark over India's upcoming series against Pakistan in December.
India and Pakistan played a bilateral series last time in 2012-13 and there was a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) of six series which is applicable until 2022.
"I condemn the terrorist attacks, specially in the Gurdaspur region. If you talk about cricket with Pakistan, we must understand that life of every Indian is very important to us. As I see my responsibility as BCCI secretary, as a Parliamentarian, life of every Indian is very important to me. It's not only about cricket, it's about my country," Thakur, a lawmaker of India's ruling party BJP told a Television channel.
"Cricket and terror cannot go hand in hand. Earlier also there was no such decision that the series will take place. Only the PCB has reached out to the BCCI. We were talking on those lines but when you see such attack on India time and again, the Jammu region, now Punjab, where Indians are losing their lives, as an Indian I don't see a possibility to that," the Hamirpur MP added.
Thakur's words comes after six people -- a senior police officer, two home guards personnel and three civilians -- were killed in the attack.
Pakistan was to play host to India in December 2015 as part of the new Future Tours Programme (FTP) system of cricket's world governing body, ICC. The series involved three Tests, five One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and two Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is).
