It is safe to say that the opening ceremony of Pakistan Super League (PSL) was much more thrilling than most of the early matches that the league was able to put on display in what has often been called a showcase event by Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) officials. And this, by the way, is not intended to underscore the quality of the ceremony.

Of course, there is every possibility — and hope — that there would have been many a firework by the time these lines appear in print, but by the end of the first phase that was played out in Dubai — before the scene moved to Sharjah — the numbers were rather grim.

After eight matches, the number of runs scored stood at 2,178 in 301 overs; an average of 7.23 runs per over. This would have meant 144 runs in an innings of 20 overs, but that was not the case, as the runs were scored over 16 innings for an average of 136 runs per outing. And there have been 96 wickets that went down to score that many runs; 22 runs per wicket. These are not the kinds of numbers reflective of exciting cricket in the context of the shorter wham-bam format.


PSL has to be more about entertainment than the game


Besides, there has been very little contest on display, with the side batting second, winning five of the eight matches in Dubai — 62.5pc. The games clearly died a silent death by the time the first innings came to a close; so low were the team totals that the side batting second hardly came under any pressure. And even when the side batting first did win a match — Lahore against Quetta and Peshawar against Islamabad, for instance — the contest was still not smart enough.

The standout match was the one between Islamabad and Karachi in which all the 40 overs were exhausted and a couple of runs separated the two teams.

All this, however, had less to do with the quality of cricket on the field, and more to do with the quality of pitches that had been prepared for the games. It is an administrative flaw basically. Had the same pitches been prepared for T20 international fixtures, they would have made perfect sense. It would have brought serious cricketing skills into the equation and Pakistan would have stood to gain more than its opponents in view of the turn the slow-paced surfaces have offered to the bowlers.

Just taking the pace off the ball does the trick on such pitches as it is enough to shift the onus on to the batsmen to generate their own pace and that is not an impossibility by any means, but it is just about as possible as convincing Inzamamul Haq to lose weight, Shoaib Akhtar to keep quiet or Shahid Afridi to be sensible in shot selection. All these are perfectly doable; but only on paper.

In an international setting, it would have worked wonders for Pakistan in the shape of ‘home advantage’. And yet the matches would have been interesting because of the sustained skill level and star value from top to bottom of a batting order. The matches would have been low-scoring but still thrilling.

As far as the leagues go, they have to be more entertaining than thrilling. Taking the field one has to be alive to the simple fact that it is more a game show than a game per se. The Indian Premier League (IPL) had set the tone, and the Australian Big Bash League (BBL) is taking the phenomenon to a newer, higher level.

And to do that, one needs proper T20 pitches tailor-made to facilitate big hitting. This in turn means flat tracks with consistent and enough pace to let the ball come to the bat. The skill the crowds — both in the stadium and on the television — want to watch is hitting. Plain and simple. No rocket science at all. Just one innings by Umar Akmal in the last of the eight matches in Dubai would prove the point.

Indeed, the purists will scoff and they should. After all they are purists for a reason. They want equal chance for both the bat and the ball. But this is not an ideal world and if, as administrators, you are following a trend, you have to follow the pattern as well. After all, the PSL is more — if not all — about making some money.

It was only after the IPL success that others had thought about it. The PSL had its false starts and so many stutters that it was a miracle that it indeed could get under way. The reason that kept the dream alive was purely not the promotion of the game. It had some political connotations alright, but basically it was a way for the PCB to keep the cash flowing in as international cricket dried up owing to security reasons and India refused to honour its commitment to play an ‘away’ series with Pakistan.

The PSL is but an offshoot of the IPL — like so many others around the cricketing world. There is nothing to compare between the two in terms of financial numbers, but its influence is massive. In fact, it is so massive that Ramiz Raja, one of the leading lights of PSL, fumbled at one of the presentation ceremonies and just about called Karachi Kings the Kings XI which is an IPL franchise!

So, if you are about cashing in on a trend, then it is not unwise to do it well. Do it professionally. In an era where people have been scoring massive hundreds in the T20 format and teams are scoring or approaching 200 in an innings rather frequently, the initial numbers raised on the field were surely depressing rather than thrilling. Just providing proper surfaces would have done the trick and one could have matched the thrill if not the financial numbers of the leagues elsewhere.

Had the players fumbled on their own, it would have surely been beyond the control of the administrators, but with slow and turning wickets, PSL shot itself in the foot. Even in the first match right after the opening ceremony where the PSL boss addressed the crowd like a Pakistani politician would have done, the commentators started talking of the surface within the initial Power Play.

One hopes that the PSL would be a success and lead to bigger things, but a decent, professional start would have helped them cover the ground more effectively and more quickly.

humair.ishtiaq@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, February 14th, 2016

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