Sport should get used to England’s ring of steel, says ECB security expert

REG DICKASON stood on the outfield in front of the pavilion at the Zohur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium on Wednesday night, watching Jos Buttler holding aloft the trophy that the England team had just won for sealing a 2-1 ODI series victory against Bangladesh. For the players, most of whom would travel home the next day, it marked an ending of sorts. For Dickason, it did not.

Sure, there was some satisfaction to be had. The one-day segment of the controversial tour was over and despite the fears of two players who had refused to travel, Eoin Morgan and Alex Hales, it had come to a close without off-the-field incident. Much of the credit for that was due to Dickason, the ECB’s much-respected director of security.

But the tour was not over. The one-day squad were going home but two warm-up games and two Testsremain. The threat to the England party has not diminished. This is just the start of a long winter. A five-Test tour of India follows this. And then an ODI tour. They, too, carry considerable risk. Sport has become a target and there is no going back.

‘Every day is a new challenge isn’t it,’ said Dickason. ‘One part of the tour is over but it’s our job to make sure the standards don’t slip and everybody is switched on every day. I have to say I have been very happy so far. The local people here, the authorities, have been unbelievably supportive, so up to now, it’s been fantastic.

‘In India, the levels of security around the team will be similar. It will be different but it will be similar. We’ve got our minimum standards that protect our players and our touring group.

‘Historically, people thought sport was exempt from terrorist threat but that’s proved not to be the case in recent years. Awareness is heightened because of recent events all around the world. The levels of security we are seeing now around sport will be the norm. All sporting bodies know that if there is an attack, it affects morale. It affects morale where attacks take place. It affects tourism. The whole lot.’

Many of the players who were in Chittagong with the ODI squad and many of those who are there now with the Test group were there because of Dickason, a former Melbourne police officer and counter-terrorism expert. They were there because they trust him. Several of them have been open about that.

Dickason carried out his assessment of the security threat to the England party in Bangladesh in the wake of a terrorist attack in Dhaka earlier this year that killed 24 people. He decided that, with the right security in place, the risk would be minimised and the tour viable. All except Morgan and Hales abided by his advice.

‘If Reg says it’s OK, it’s OK,’ has become a mantra for a generation of players. Does that responsibility weigh heavily on him? ‘I guess it does,’ said Dickason. ‘Regardless of where we tour, I do feel responsible.’

It was a novel experience being part of the tour last week. Players, crack troops, police, media and medics travelled together in a 10vehicle convoy from the team hotel, sirens blaring through streets lined with thousands of curious Bangladeshis.

Dickason had liaised with the local authorities to ensure that every time England travelled, roads that were usually choked with traffic had been closed to allow a speedy passage between hotel and stadium. In a country where the roads are an exercise in anarchy, it was an impressively smooth operation.

‘The security is very evident and the best we have ever had,’ said Trevor Bayliss, the increasingly impressive England coach. ‘It is there but you do not really notice it. Everyone feels comfortable in the group and the protection they have got if something does occur.’

It seemed faintly surreal being part of that convoy but the sad truth is that these levels of security around sport are becoming the norm. At football’s European Championship, the Paris metro crawled with armed soldiers and buses carrying the teams had their own miniversion of our Chittagong convoy, too. At the Rio Olympics, journalists were used to the sight of armed soldiers patrolling the beaches, hotels and venues. To makes one’s way to the Maracana Stadium for the opening ceremony was to walk through a heavily militarised exclusion zone.

So the idea that the levels of security that accompanied England in Bangladesh will fade away is misguided. Sport is a target in the modern world.

It has not always been like this. The murder of Israeli athletes by terrorists at the Munich Olympics in 1972 was the most deadly incident of its kind but it was an exception. It is only recently, when terrorists attacked the Sri Lanka team bus in Lahore in 2005 and a suicide bomber targeted the Stade de France in Paris last year, that it has become apparent that sport is not immune.

‘The problems we are facing globally insist that we up the level of security for sporting events,’ said Dickason. ‘Attackers are looking for something that gives immediate global impact and sport does that.’

There is another point here, too. The work that Dickason is doing in Bangladesh is important for other reasons than keeping England’s cricketers safe. That might be his only goal but the ramifications are wider. If England had pulled out then it would, in all likelihood, have spelled the end of international cricket visits to the country for some time.

Bangladesh might have joined Pakistan as a nation that other cricket countries refused to visit. And cricket is not football. It cannot easily absorb setbacks like that. It does not have the numbers. It already has Pakistan playing to empty stadiums in the UAE.

And so this is the way forward. For cricket and for sport. Perhaps the levels of security around England in Bangladesh seem excessive but they are necessary. Men with Dickason’s expertise are necessary. ‘I am conservative by nature,’ said Dickason. ‘In my business, I have to be.’