New Zealand's tour to Pakistan abandoned, Australia calls off their tour to Zimbabwe and now Australia's tour of Pakistan is in doubt - what chance the successful future of the International Cricket Council's Test Championship?

Clearly it is not looking good.

Terrorism has heightened the risk involved in cricket touring. A more peaceful event than a cricket tour is hard to imagine, but terrorism knows no bounds.

And if a homicide bomber, because that is what these individuals cloaked in explosive are - their victims are murdered and that is the more harmful act than suicide, decides to line up a bus and run into it, there is not a lot that the best-intentioned security forces can do.

The French workers killed in Karachi in the explosion that ended New Zealand's tour of Pakistan had been threatened and were travelling by different routes to their work every day from their hotel.

However, that wasn't enough to prevent this act.

Therein lies the danger to future contact, especially in Pakistan, but also in India and possibly Sri Lanka.

The situation is disastrous, and sad, for cricket.

But sport is not immune from terrorist acts.

Just as politicians have been quick to use sport as a vehicle for protest, in the form of American president Jimmy Carter in 1980 over the Moscow Olympics at the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and of several countries, pro and anti, over the apartheid regime in South Africa, so too could terrorists.

New Zealand and Pakistan have tried everything to ensure the peaceful completion of this tour. But still peace has evaded them.

From a cricket viewpoint, the series bears no impact on the ICC Test Championship, as only one Test was completed, and two are required.

Whether the second Test of the series can be played, in New Zealand or on neutral territory, is a situation for the administrators to resolve in a calendar that is already weighted down.

It may be time for the ICC to reconsider the Championship.

New Zealand's injury woes have been highlighted on this tour which was re-scheduled to make up for the cancellation of the first tour attempt in September last year. Injuries may have occurred on that original tour, we will never know.

But the fact is the touring regime is putting too much pressure on players and threatens to dilute the quality of Test match cricket rather than achieve its goal of strengthening the game and heightening interest in Test match play. New Zealand was but a shadow of itself on the tour with so many players at home resting up or awaiting surgery.

There was no way the strengths of New Zealand and Pakistan cricket could be measured by the first Test margin of an innings and 324 runs. And the question has to be asked was cricket really being well served by the prospect of an equally humiliating result being achieved in the second Test?

There are other examples around the world.

Test matches barely last five days anywhere nowadays.

As well intentioned as the five-year cycle, and 10-year plan were in their evolution, times have quickly changed since September 11, 2001.

It may well be that something like a Test match championship, played out over a 12-month period involving nine Test matches per country with a grand final starting in Melbourne, Newlands or the Basin Reserve, on Boxing Day is one option to be considered.

Then countries could go about meeting their other obligations to all other countries in the other three years at a less rigorous pace.

Whatever else, political unrest in Zimbabwe, terrorist activities in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, have put cricket under pressure and some serious issues await the game's administrators, whether they like it or not.

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