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When your husband goes off to play cricket in a dangerous place, leaving you behind to do the worrying, there's little else you can do but put your trust in those involved. The dangers would be in the back of my mind when Matthew went on tour to Pakistan or India in recent years, but I would remind myself that dreadful things could happen anywhere, at any time, and that my husband was being looked after by people who could be trusted to keep him safe.

There have been two tours to the sub-continent when Matthew and the rest of the England squad were unsure whether to go, to India in late 2001 and to Pakistan four years later. Both times the reports convinced us that we could trust the security being put in place. But after the terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Lahore on Tuesday, I'm not sure whether that trust can exist any more.

It is never an easy decision to commit yourself to a tour like that because there are issues of family and career to take into account. All the players are sent big, thick security documents to help them to make informed decisions and I remember those dossiers providing us with plenty of bedtime reading. But much of the advice is security mumbo jumbo, which the ordinary man in the street would struggle to understand, so again you just have to trust those people who have told you that it is safe to go on tour.

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I would never have told Matthew that I didn't want him to go. If he was happy to go, I would back him up on that decision. For those visits to India and Pakistan, he never thought that the dangers were sufficient to stop him from going.

There were players, though, who pulled out of that tour to India, which came a couple of months after the 9/11 attacks, and I remember them getting quite a bit of stick at the time. But Andy Caddick and Robert Croft have families and took their decisions for that reason. As soon as you have kids, the picture changes. Our son, Ernie, wasn't born until 2007, so Matthew didn't have those considerations at the time. If he had to make a decision like that now, it would be a much harder call because he would be leaving a lot more behind.

I don't envy the decision facing those families who have to work out whether it is worth their dad and husband going to play in the IPL next month, especially those like Andrew and Rachael Flintoff, who have three kids.

As wives and girlfriends, we didn't go out to join the lads in Pakistan in 2005. The security required to look after the players on a tour like that is considerable and it would be an enormous operation to take in the partners and children as well. It would have cost a fortune. We did, however, go to India a few months later, when I experienced the heightened security arrangements for the first time. By this stage it was water off a duck's back for Matthew because he'd seen it all before several times, but at first it was daunting for me. We had an armed response unit on our hotel floor and it felt weird to walk out of the lift on my way back from breakfast and be greeted by a man with a huge machinegun saying: “Good morning.” And if we wanted to go out for a meal, we would be accompanied by a couple of ex-SAS men at all times.

I think there were some people who looked at all the security around us and thought: “Oh God, we must be in danger if we need all this protection.” But for me, the overriding feeling was one that we were genuinely safe.

That was of particular importance in India, where the cricket supporters are so fanatical that every time you step out of the hotel you are likely to get mobbed. Most of the time in England, Matthew might get recognised by a cricket fan here and there, but it's not like walking around with a famous person. On tour in India we got a taste of what the Beckhams' lives must be like all the time. So in situations like that, it's important that you are made to feel secure.

There might have been the odd time when we wondered whether all that security was necessary, whether we really needed Big Brother watching out for us on every corner. Is anybody really interested in attacking us? I don't think anybody will be wondering that again.

It's all too easy for people to say that cricketers should just plough on, go ahead with their tours and play a game that they are paid for playing. But after the events of Tuesday in Lahore, cricket tours have become a different ball game.