NZ to assess Pak tour

New Zealand Cricket officials said Friday they will decide by Monday at the latest whether the tour of Pakistan will go ahead this month after threats were made against the players if the series proceeds.

Full details of the threat have not been released but New Zealand Cricket (NZC) chief executive Martin Snedden said it was "very direct -- it is explicit about the Black Caps in Pakistan and a warning not to go."

The email message "certainly threatened consequences if the team were to ignore the warning".

However, four players and an official who decided not to tour had withdrawn before the threat was received earlier this week.

Craig McMillan, Scott Styris, Lou Vincent, Ian Butler and team video analyst Zach Hitchcock made themselves unavailable because of trauma from witnessing a fatal bomb blast in Karachi during New Zealand's tour of Pakistan last year.

Heath Mills, manager of New Zealand Players Association, said members of the New Zealand team currently playing in India were "definitely shaken" by the threat, but he could not say if more players would refuse to go to Pakistan.

Snedden said officials were gathering as much information as they could about the threat and "until we've really gone through that process it's a bit difficult to know" if the tour will go ahead. He said a decision would be made by Sunday or Monday.

New Zealand's ambassador to Iran, Niels Holm, who is also accredited to Pakistan, described the email as "vaguely threatening", the Dominion Post reported.

He said it was not unusual, particularly in Pakistan.

"It's the sort of thing that if you saw it painted on a wall you wouldn't pay a blind bit of attention to it."

The Black Caps cut short their tour of Pakistan following the bombing last year and the country became a no-go zone for other cricketing nations until Bangladesh toured in August this year, and South Africa followed last month.

Both tours came off peacefully although South Africa avoided Karachi and the northwest city Peshawar on the grounds of risk and the team was flanked by presidential-level security squads.

"Security is perfect. Recently South Africa toured Pakistan and played five one-day games and three test matches, so that's not a problem," Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) spokesman Samiul Hassan said.

The revised New Zealand itinerary, due to start on November 22, also avoids Karachi.