We all have to accept that just about every centre of population on e a r t h i s n o w exposed to the threat of zealously perpetrated mass murder.

Yet it does seem a little stiff-upper-lip simplistic to condemn England’s cricketers unreservedly for deciding, in the wake of the Mumbai atrocities, that India was a concentration of hazard they preferred to view from the window of a climbing plane. They had been safe in distant Bhubaneswar as the toll of dead and wounded rose amid the terrorist gun and grenade attacks on multiple landmark targets in Mumbai, and it was right that their own and other people’s concerns about their security barely registered out on the margins of reaction to the calamity. Still, anybody observing from this country should hesitate over suggesting the anxiety that has brought them home was unjustified.

The facts don’t allow us to dismiss it automatically as the product of exaggerated fears developed within the cocoon of self-absorption and unworldliness likely to enclose any travelling group of elite sportsmen. There were particular circumstances bound to deepen the impact on the England party of the horror story told by their television screens.

Perhaps most disturbing were the reports that, while rounding up hostages, the terrorists had been taking pains to identify holders of British and American passports, a priority liable to make a high-profile cricket squad alarmingly attractive. But even before those accounts emerged, Kevin Pieter-sen and his men had been shaken by the realisation that some of the carnage occurred in the vividly familiar setting of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel.

Their six-night stay there at the start of their tour (another booking had been made for late in December) was in keeping with a tradition that has seen generations of visiting cricketers use the venerable hotel as a base. Middlesex were due to check into the Taj Mahal Palace last Thursday night in preparation for representing England in the inaugural Twenty20 Champions League tournament and thus might have been part of a corpse-strewn nightmare had the killers adjusted their schedule by a couple of days. Such thoughts are unlikely to have escaped the England players or to have lessened their urge to be a continent away and back with their families. The argument that they should remain in India stood little chance against the associations and possibilities stirred in their minds.

There are undoubtedly grounds for saying they were wrong to opt instantly for evacuation when it would have been more sensible and more dignified to spend a day or two in quiet deliberation behind the cordon of heavily armed protectors surrounding them. But yielding to their emotions was surely less reprehensible, more understandable, than it was made out to be in an editorial carried in The Times yesterday under the heading “Fainthearts”. That comment piece reminded us: “For more than a billion Indians, life goes on. For British diplomats in Del-hi, life goes on.” Of course, but what choice do the Indians have? Emigration? And when diplomats sign up aren’t they committing themselves to work on through the direst emergencies? Maybe the funda-m e n t a l q u e s t i o n t o b e addressed here is how much of that kind of commitment can be demanded of sportsmen.

Perhaps, given the level of danger global terrorism has introduced to the daily lives of ordinary citizens all over the world, the emerging answer is that they will have to accept more risk than the current England cricketers regard as tolerable. But it is hard to see how all this can be other than a matter to be left to individual or, in the case of teams, collective consciences. There was no persuasive basis for disputing the cricketers’ right to decide they wanted out of India, or the gen-uineness of the feelings they expressed concerning their safety and the strain on loved ones in England. The shadowy area relates to the state of mind in which the determination to get home took root. Had a low-morale tendency to be easy on themselves been engendered by a one-day series which, at the point of its abandonment last week, showed five straight wins for India, with a seven-match whitewash looming? Only the men involved can know, and they may protest that even speculating on the issue is offensive.

Now the question is whether they should swiftly return to fulfil official declarations that the two-Test series arranged for next month will, with the Test meant to be played in Mumbai relocated to Chennai, go ahead. The signs among the players before they took off from Banga-lore yesterday were of a stubborn resistance to the idea of being back in India this week. One of them was quoted as shouting to a reporter friend that they could look forward to having a Christmas drink. That was harmless enough but it did hint at a lack of appreciation of how momentous the decision to quit the subcontinent so abruptly had been.

A sympathetic understanding of why they left does not prevent me from believing they should return. Obviously that opinion has nothing to do with the agitation in the game’s administrative and political circles about disrupted fixtures, contracts or compensation. I simply think that, having hada brief opportunity to reconsider their position, the cricketers should be wondering if their opposition to playing the Tests solidified too hastily. Farfetched as it probably seems to them this morning, their future may be happier if they take the field at Ahmedabad on December 11.

League flaunts its Sunday best

THIS is the kind of day that makes the Premier League’s boasts about itself as compulsive viewing rather difficult to brush aside. The meeting of Chelsea and Arsenal alone would be enough to ensure a compelling afternoon, especially for collectors of what qualifies in football as a crisis. That peculiar species has been suspected of lurking around Arsenal for some time now and lately there have been tentative claims that evidence of its presence is detectable in the even less likely environs of Stamford Bridge.

So will there be a genuine sighting of a live crisis in west London today? Hardly, but if Arsenal lose, Arsène Wenger will have to admit we are looking at a dead championship challenge. If forced to withstand such a result, the Frenchman could obviously keep fears of a fourth barren season in a row at bay with thoughts of how readily his young players progressed to the last 16 of the Champions League but his faith in them would be severely tested by having domestic title hopes killed off before Christmas.

Disenchantment for Wenger would, of course, be reassurance for Luiz Felipe Scolari, and that is something he certainly needs after Chelsea’s recent stumbles.

The Brazilian knows that between today and tomorrow he could conceivably learn quite a lot about his prospects of dominating the Premier League at his first attempt. A Chelsea win will have a profound effect on the championship race if, earlier in the day, Manchester City have proved capable of extending the extraordinary run of successful results they have been enjoying against Manchester United. Scolari might then be looking to West Ham to provide a major surprise at Anfield on Monday.

But there is a danger in all this of being as fanciful as the crisis-trackers. Shocks would be fun but the odds are that Chelsea, United and Liverpool will win and declare themselves the true contenders for the title.

Khan needs care

There will be no lack of good wishes from me as the personable Amir Khan returns to the ring in London on Saturday night for his first fight since being battered to one-round defeat by the Colombian Breidis Prescott in early September. The campaign to resurrect dreams of glory has been strengthened by enlisting the expert coaching services of Freddie Roach, at whose Hollywood gym the 21-year-old from Bolton has been preparing for the weekend engagement.

But the vulnerability of Khan’s chin suggests matchmaking could be as crucial as tuition and Saturday’s opponent, Dublin-born Oisin Fagan, appears to have been chosen with a predictable emphasis on caution. Oisin’snom de guerreis Gael Force but, since his mainly American record indicates he began as a pro in 2003 when already 29 years old, he it is who should be blown away.