England opt to return home after Mumbai attacks

WIndia Test series will take place on their return

WTwenty20 Champions League postponed

WSub-continent cricket blighted by security concerns

John MEHAFFEY

England opted on Thursday to return home from India after militant attacks in Mumbai killed at least 119 people but promised to return for two cricket tests next month.

The decision followed an announcement that the two remaining one-day internationals in a seven-match series would be cancelled. Officials said later the games could be rescheduled.

Tests are scheduled for Ahmedabad from Dec. 11-15 and Mumbai from Dec. 19-23.

England held meetings at the team hotel in Bhubaneswar after losing their fifth one-day match in succession to India on Wednesday.

England and Wales Cricket Board managing director Hugh Morris said the team would be guided by security advice.

However, any decision appeared to be pre-empted when Board of Control for Cricket in India vice-president Lalit Modi said the test series would go ahead with the Mumbai match shifted to a venue in southern India.

Morris then told reporters the team management had decided to go home but would come back for the test series.

"We feel that, even if it were for a few days, the home environment is the place where the players should be," Morris told Sky Sports News.

"The test matches are in place and unless we get security advice to the contrary we will be playing those tests." Modi, one of the powerbrokers of world cricket and the man behind the lucrative Indian Premier League Twenty20 competition introduced this year, said he had been told the England players would leave the country in the two-week gap between the one-day and test series.

"If they are going home we are very happy they are going home," he said.

Next month's Twenty20 Champions League, featuring teams from Australia, South Africa, England, India and Pakistan, was postponed and the unofficial Indian Cricket League cancelled their match in Ahmedabad.

Cricket on the Indian sub-continent has been blighted by security scares for the past 20 years.

New Zealand have abandoned two tours of Sri Lanka and one of Pakistan after bomb blasts. Australia and West Indies refused to play their Sri Lanka group matches at the 1996 World Cup following an explosion in Colombo.

This year the International Cricket Council postponed the Champions League one-day tournament scheduled in Pakistan for the first time after five countries, including England, said they would not take part because of security fears.

LONDON, Friday (Reuters)