Manager says Warne, Smith and Watson 'uncomfortable'

Rajasthan stars consider going home after bomb blasts

Cricinfo staff

May 15, 2008

	Darren Berry and Shane Warne would not have flown to India if the attack had happened before they were due to arrive © Getty Images

Darren Berry, the Rajasthan Royals team manager, says there is a "real option" three of the team's highest profile players will not return to Jaipur following a series of bombs that killed about 80 people in the city on Tuesday. Berry is having a four-day break in Goa with Shane Warne, Shane Watson and Graeme Smith and said the group had considered "getting on the plane and getting out of here".

"We are not comfortable at all," Berry told the Sydney Morning Herald from Goa. "This is an extremely uncomfortable situation. Cricket has been good to me, but I have a wife and three kids back in Melbourne and they are less than impressed with the part of the world I am in."

Berry said there had been discussions with Warne over the seriousness of the situation. "I was talking to Warney this morning and asked: 'If this blast had occurred a day before we were due to fly over here, would we still have come?' He said there was no way we would have come.

"It is terrifying. To think I was standing in the exact location the bombs went off only two days ago ... it was a couple of kilometres from the team hotel. The whole country has gone into lockdown."

The IPL has refused to move Saturday's match against Bangalore from Jaipur, but there will be an increased security prescence. "That is the part that scares me," Berry said. "These games are getting big crowds.

"People over here tell me this has nothing to do with cricket, it is political ... but if some people are prepared to cause this type of damage, detonating bombs in peak hour to harm the most number of people possible ... 50,000 people come to the stadium to watch the games."

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