Pakistan face international sporting isolation after gunmen attacked the Sri Lanka [Images] cricket team in Lahore [Images] on Tuesday in a chilling reminder of the 1972 Munich Olympic [Images] massacre.

Six Sri Lanka players were wounded and eight Pakistanis killed when a dozen gunmen fired on their coach as they were being driven to the Gaddafi stadium [Images].

It was the first major attack to be directed at athletes since Munich, when the pro-Palestinian Black September group killed 11 members of the Israeli team.

Sri Lanka's visit was a gesture of solidarity after India refused to tour this year because of security concerns. Pakistan toured Sri Lanka in the 1990s when other teams declined because of a series of bomb attacks.

No international team will now visit Pakistan, who did not play a single test match either home or away last year, while the security situation remains so volatile.

The International Cricket Council [Images] (ICC [Images]) board meets next month to discuss the 2011 World Cup which is to be jointly hosted by India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Pakistan are due to stage 14 matches, including a semi-final in Lahore, but ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat told a news conference on Tuesday: "It will be challenging for us to be convinced that Pakistan will be a safe venue."

Lorgat said no decision needed to be made until a year before the tournament and added the other three countries could stage the matches scheduled for Pakistan. However, he also said the larger the region, the more difficult the security.

The shock waves of Tuesday's attack quickly spread through the sporting world.

India's team, currently touring New Zealand [Images], immediately requested extra security. Last November the England [Images] team interrupted their tour of India after militants killed around 170 people in Mumbai [Images].

Other federations will re-examine their security arrangements in an increasingly uncertain world, including the International Association of Athletics Federations who host their biennial world championships in Berlin this August.

"It's changed the landscape, full stop, not just in the India sub-continent," ICC president David Morgan said. "I think that other sporting administrations will be extremely concerned."

The ICC took the Champions Trophy [Images] away from Pakistan after England, Australia [Images], South Africa [Images], New Zealand, and West Indies [Images] said they would not attend because the country was too dangerous.

In 1996, Australia and West Indies refused to play their scheduled World Cup group games in Colombo in the last Asian World Cup because of a bomb blast in the Sri Lanka capital a fortnight earlier.

New Zealand cut short their tour of Pakistan in 2002 after a car bomb exploded in front of their hotel in Karachi.

Cricket's power base has shifted from England and Australia to India where money has poured into the game since the one-day game, followed by Twenty20 [Images] cricket captured the popular imagination.

Any attempt to shift the World Cup away from the sub-continent could split the cricketing world.