Kevin Pietersen will refuse to place pressure on any England player who wants to opt out of the Test series in India if it goes ahead next month. The captain has urged the cricket boards to ignore financial issues before deciding whether to restart the tour in the wake of continuing terrorism in Bombay and wants assurances over player safety before agreeing to return.

The squad left for its “time-out” via Bangalore yesterday under heavy armed guard, any return to India in the balance. At Bhubaneswar airport, news channels were still screening live footage of the siege at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel, England’s base for the start and finish of the original itinerary. Reg Dickason, the team security officer, is to head back to India to gather intelligence and his findings will influence the ECB position heavily.

Hugh Morris, the managing director of England Cricket, has told the players that safety and security will be the sole issues in determining any decision and Pietersen admitted that he felt a personal duty of care towards his team-mates. He is concerned, however, that the powerful Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) may have a bigger picture in focus.

“I think the BCCI will make every single effort to get us back playing Tests in India because of TV rights, finances and so on,” Pietersen said. “At the end of the day they run world cricket, so we will see what happens. But we will not come back if it is unsafe. My life means more to me than anything else, and I can totally understand if individual players have misgivings. I am not going to force any adult who has a wife and kids to do anything.”

The first Test in Ahmedabad is scheduled to begin on December 11 and the BCCI has said that the second will be moved from Bombay to Madras after the ECB requested a southern venue. England may opt to practise in Dubai or Abu Dhabi rather than play the three-day warm-up game in Baroda scheduled to start on Friday, allowing more time to assess the likelihood of threats in India.

Pietersen first heard news of the shootings and bomb blasts on the journey from Cuttack to Bhubaneswar after the six-wicket loss in the fifth one-day international on Wednesday evening. “I watched the coverage on television when I woke up and it was pretty graphic, more so than it seems to have been in England,” he said. “You could see the pools of blood at the Taj, troops jumping out of helicopters and everything else. It really shook the guys.”

Every player will have his memories of the six days spent in and around the hotel. Pietersen recalled walking down the steps behind the adjacent Gateway of India monument to meet friends on a boat at Sassoon Bay, where the terrorists are thought to have disembarked. The team kit for the Test matches had been left in the Taj and was due to be collected after the one-day series. “If we come back, we may be the first team ever to play a Test match in blue,” he said.

The team held two meetings on Thursday and agreed unanimously that they wanted to go home. “It really was a tough day,” Pietersen said. “We thought the best thing to do was to get back to our friends and family, where all our relatives know we are safe. All of the guys ran out of power on their mobile phones on Thursday through calls to friends and relatives. Kids were asking, ‘Daddy, where are you, what’s the story?’

“It is a real situation for us and we have bought some time with this decision. Now, all we want is go home because of what we’ve seen. Mumbai was the place we were happiest on tour. The time we spent there was lovely, the way of life in Mumbai is fantastic that way of life, which is the best way of life in India, has now gone.”

For all of his personal concerns, the professional side of Pietersen feels that he has “unfinished business” after losing all five one-day internationals. With Andrew Flintoff due to be rested because of trouble at the front of an ankle, there was every prospect of a 7-0 defeat had the series taken its course. “One of the biggest things for me is to come back to this country and win something,” Pietersen said.