Players welcome chance to get together after Pakistan experience

New Zealand's cricketers who returned home after the Karachi bomb blast 10 days ago got together in Christchurch on Saturday.

New Zealand Cricket's sports psychologist Gilbert Enoka contacted the players who toured Sri Lanka when the 1992 bomb blast occurred outside their Colombo hotel and asked those players what they appreciated when they returned home.

Some of the players remained on tour while five players and the coach returned home after the blast.

The advice Enoka received was that the 1992 players would have liked to be able to get together as a group to talk about what happened.

New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming said that it had been a good idea by NZC to follow up on the last bomb blast and talk to the players who had been exposed to terrorism before.

Getting back together as a group was what they said, he said.

Those players felt the split that occurred in the team in 1992 had hampered the recovery process.

"We had a lot of time to discuss what happened and we shared the experience as a group, and it was good of NZC to offer this service.

Counsellors spoke with players and their partners who wanted to talk with them on Saturday in Christchurch, Fleming said.

Now the side was focusing firmly on the West Indies tour. The side for that tour, which will be split into 15 for the five One-Day Internationals and 14 for the two Test matches, will be named in Christchurch on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Fleming refuted comments that he had been taking video camera shots of the carnage in the aftermath of the bomb blast in Karachi.

He said the team has quite a good camera and he took two photos of the structural damage caused by the blast, and took nothing gory.

"It was for the players' personal files.

"I don't have a video camera," Fleming said.

The side process any shots they want for their own files from the group camera.

The report was rubbish, he said.