We deserve better

Cricket Australia's decision on Friday to defer the scheduled tour of the Aussies to Bangladesh due to security concerns came as a bolt from the blue for a cricket-crazy nation that was gearing up to cap a memorable year of festivity, which incidentally started during the World Cup down under.

It all started after a travel advice update on Friday by Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) for its citizens staying or travelling to Bangladesh. It states: "There is reliable information to suggest that militants may be planning to target Australian interests in Bangladesh."

And according to Cricket Australia's (CA's) CEO James Sunderland that advice prompted them to defer the departure of Steve Smith's men, who were set to fly from different parts of Australia for Dhaka today to play a two-Test series.

To assess the gravity of the situation in the 'hostile' territory the CA has sent its chief of security Sean Carroll, who is now in Dhaka and was reportedly having a series of meetings with the Australian High Commissioner in Bangladesh, the BCB officials and intelligence agencies.

"Our position is we want the tour to go ahead as planned.  This has obviously come very suddenly and we've needed to make this response. Our preferred position is to continue with the tour, but the safety and security of our players and staff is the absolute priority and the first priority for us is to secure that. We'll be endeavouring to get some undertakings and understandings of what the situation is in Bangladesh before making any further decisions in regard to the tour," Sunderland was quoted by reporters on Sunday.

It's true that DFAT's Friday's updated advice was unusually specific about Bangladesh.

But it is not understandable the way CA reacted to that advice, which firstly and most importantly put Bangladesh in an embarrassing situation. We are not even sure whether the CA has maintained the proper protocol or standard practice before telling the whole world that they couldn't respect an agreed schedule due to a suspected threat to its players.

We don't know whether the CA has communicated with the Australian High Commission in Bangladesh and whether they have paid any attention to the response of the BCB prior to going public regarding an issue that many felt could have been handled in a respectable and professional way.

We don't want to ignore the security threat, fully aware of the fact that we are living in a world where terrorist attacks are a daily dose of our life. But at the same time we deplore any attempt of being bracketed as a militant-attack-prone zone without conclusive evidence.

Sunderland admitted that that advisory did not necessarily apply to the Australian cricket team since they are going to get the state-level security from Bangladesh, which has not only successfully hosted the T20 World Cup but also played host to three home series this year without even a single crowd disorder, let alone any militant threat. Sunderland might have not even noticed an Instagram post by South Africa fast bowler Dale Steyn, of him playing a game of soccer with some local youths outside the team hotel in Chittagong during the rain-interrupted first Test.

We don't want to get deep into the security threat because the onus is now on Australia to justify its claim. We also don't want to say how safe a place Bangladesh is when it comes to playing cricket. At the moment we are deeply shocked for being labeled as a potentially hostile place for cricketers, a label that we hardly deserve.