Former England fast bowler Kabir Ali was lucky to avoid a run-in with terrorists with perpetrators of Mumbai terror attack.

Kabir, currently playing for Worcestershire, had been in the Taj Hotel on Wednesday afternoon and was due to have dinner there that night.

However, he changed his plan at the last minute and decided to go to a cinema and was running late for dinner, thereby managing to escape the violence.

"I should have been at the hotel by 9pm; about half an hour before the shooting started," Kabir said.

"I don't know why I changed my mind. For some reason something told me not to go and I went to the cinema instead. I started watching the film, but it soon became obvious something was wrong. Some people ran out of the cinema.

"Then I received a text telling me what was happening and I got out. There was panic outside. There were sirens and bangs and people running. It was chaos," he was quoted as saying by 'The Times'.