LONDON, Nov 30: England are making contingency plans for their Test series in India after Steve Harmison said on Sunday that returning to the subcontinent in the wake of the terror attacks in Mumbai would be the most important decision of his life.

“The carnage is unimaginable, like a horror movie,” the fast bowler told the Mail on Sunday. “I’m sorry but whatever is being asked of us in the next few days, at the moment, the idea of being asked to go back out there is the last thing on my mind.”

Harmison responded to suggestions in the British media that England had a moral obligation to go back to India for the two-Test series.

“This is beyond cricket, this is beyond anything,” he said. “It’s all very well for people back home to say we should carry on with the tour, but none of what has happened has anything to do with cricket. How anyone can say that we should be carrying on with the tour in the circumstances is beyond me. I can’t say now that I will definitely not come back or that I definitely will.”

Harmison warned that even if the England and Wales Cricket Board guarantee the team’s security, he and his team-mates will not automatically agree to play.

“If the board say they want us to go back the players have about 72 hours to come to the most important decision of their lives,” he said. “All I hope is that nobody thinks we will take it lightly.”

Harmison’s previous reluctance to tour led him to retire from limited-overs internationals in 2006. He rescinded that decision in August after a plea from England captain Kevin Pietersen.

Pietersen has revealed how shaken he had been by the attacks.

“I haven’t slept, thinking about the three-day rampage and siege,” he wrote in his Sunday column for the News of the World. “We felt very vulnerable, especially as we had stayed at the targeted Taj Mahal Hotel just two weeks ago.

“We were due to go back there for the second Test – all our whites and blazers for the Test matches are still in there somewhere.”

Pietersen said he felt physically sick watching television coverage of the attacks.

“That is when it dawned on me how close we were to it all,” he said. “It was a bloodbath, the Indian television company showed it in all its gory detail; bodies everywhere, it was sick. I will never forget it. I was walking down those steps only days ago to have a quick drink with a mate on his boat. Now, they are the scene of a tragedy.

“It could have been one or all of us being carried out in a body bag. We’d just lost the fifth one-dayer when the news started coming through – but that counts for nothing when you get texts from mates in England asking if you are still alive.”—AP