Melbourne, Mar 4 : Sri Lanka's Australian coach Trevor Bayliss is expected to return home later this week after being caught in the terrorist attack in Lahore.

His wife Julie said the father of two had flown back to Colombo with the rest of the Sri Lankan team after 12 masked gunmen attacked their convoy en route to the Gaddafi stadium for the second Test against Pakistan.

Melbourne, Mar 4 : Punters in Australia look set to profit from the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore after opportunistically betting almost 20,000 dollars on their Test match against Pakistan being declared a draw.

Amid initial confusion over the shootings, TAB Sportsbet reported a rash of bets from Tasmania and the ACT as news began to filter through, the Daily Telegraph reported.

With almost no interest in the game from Australian punters until Tuesday afternoon, the market was suspended after the betting surge sparked internal alarms at TAB, but only once several four-figure bets had been laid.

Melbourne, Mar 4 : Legendary fast-bowler Glenn McGrath has said it will be a long time before the Australian cricket team returns to Pakistan, adding that the attack on the Sri Lankan team justified Australia's decision not to tour Pakistan for over 10 years.

"We haven't toured there since 1998 ... what happened yesterday justifies that. I think it will be a long time before any cricket team or sporting team ventures back to that part of the world," he said.

"At the end of the day, we play cricket because we love it and we don't really want to risk our lives by doing it. I think it will be a long, long time before we get back there, unfortunately," the Daily Telegraph quoted him, as saying.

Melbourne, Mar. 4: Champion former Australian leg-spinner Shane Warne has declared Pakistan a no-go zone, saying that the safety of players and officials should be of paramount importance.

"I can''t believe this has happened. This is an absolute tragedy," the Herald Sun quoted Warne as saying yesterday.

"It''s terrible. People have been killed and I just hope that those who have been injured are all OK. Our hearts and thoughts are with those people,” he added.

Sydney  - The last survivor of a pod of 192 pilot whales that came ashore on Tasmania's King Island at the weekend swam back out to sea Wednesday.

A recalcitrant creature had beached twice in as many days to the dismay of a volunteer army of Australian nature lovers trying to refloat the stricken pod.

The whale was the last of 54 survivors of the mass stranding that returned to the ocean. All are now safely back in deep water.

The adult female was slung between two jet skis and towed out to sea, where delighted rescuers saw it join a group of at least 20 other whales.

Sydney  - The former world-beating Australian economy has joined most of the rest of the developed world and shifted into reverse, official figures released Wednesday showed.

National accounts showed the gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 0.5 per cent in the quarter ending December.

The figures prompted falls in the stock market and in the value of the local currency as modest growth had been expected.