“Kaptan nay line la ditti’ screamed a headline in an Urdu daily published in Lahore. The year was 1970. The occasion was the country’s first general election and the man in point was none other than Abdul Hafeez Kardar, who had the honour of captaining Pakistan in its first official cricket Test. The previous day, he had won a seat in the Punjab Assembly as a nominee of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the paper had happily drawn analogy between his success against a number of rival candidates and a bowler who sends a procession of batsmen back to the pavilion.

Kardar went on to work as a Punjab minister before he returned to fight a cricketing battle with a group of rebellious national players in the latter half of the 1970s as the head of the cricket board.

This example of a sporting personality successfully taking up politics continues to be followed and today Kardar leads a pack of Lahore-based, Lahore nurtured sportsmen who have been spotted hitting it out in the field of politics after their retirement from professional sport.

Aamer Sohail, who joined the Pakistan Muslim League-N last week, is the latest addition to the list. Between him and Kardar, two famous cricketers belonging to Lahore and equally well known for speaking their mind, have been drawn to politics and have managed to enter elected assemblies. Imran Khan was a member of the National Assembly borne out of the 2002 election and is today in a league of his own, aiming for power as the head of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf. His new ball partner through the 1970s and early 1980s, Sarfraz Nawaz, was elected a member of the Punjab Assembly in the ‘non-party’ election in 1985. The master of reverse swing is now a member of the MQM.

The 1985 election, which also saw a number of showbiz figures trying their hand at electoral politics, returned Akhtar Rasool, a former star of the national hockey team again in the 1970s, to the Punjab Assembly. He later on joined the Nawaz Sharif team and won two more provincial elections. Akhtar Rasool seems to have of late fallen out of favour with the PML-N chief selectors, probably due to his hobnobbing with the Q-League during the period the Sharifs were living away in exile.

Apart from his political activities, his closeness to the rulers of the time saw Akhtar Rasool looking after the affairs of the Pakistan Hockey Federation – a job that often entails politics of its own kind. The rulers cannot help appointing their own favourites as heads of sporting bodies. In the case of Akhtar Rasool and that of the current PHF head Qasim Zia, the post at least went to someone who could be expected to be conversant in the affairs of the game.

Qasim Zia, a former left back of the national hockey team, rose to the position of the opposition leader in the Punjab Assembly after winning a Lahore seat on a PPP ticket in the 2002 general election. He was defeated by a PML-N nominee in the 2008 polls, but managed to find a way into the provincial assembly in a by-election. Technically, he now represents a Faisalabad constituency in the Punjab Assembly but he is better known in his role as the PHF chief.

All these successful sportsmen-cum-successful politicians, except Akhtar Rasool, were born in Lahore. All of them were raised in this city and it is here that they learned the skills. They stand out in a group of sporting and showbiz personalities who, when they decided to indulge in a bit of politics of their own, did not limit themselves it to paying a few courtesy calls on some influential politicians.

While some others have been content with their ‘affiliation’ with a political outfit, a sizeable group has chosen the course of reform through tableegh – through proselytising. Saeed Ahmed, Saeed Anwar, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Mushtaq Ahmed, Shahid Afridi… – the side Pakistan’s tableeghi cricketers make up is capable of taking on any eleven on any ground.

Lahore’s own ability to embrace ex-sportsmen in political roles and then send them to assemblies is a peculiar trait since it has no parallel anywhere else in Pakistan. Could it be that the city has a longer memory that enables it to honour the sportsmen beyond their playing days? To be fair, it can be said that both Akhtar Rasool and Sarfraz Nawaz were primarily beneficiaries of an election that was boycotted by popular parties of the time.

They had fame and they used it to good advantage in a field bereft of big political names in an election designed to create new political stake-holders to thwart the old ones. Akhtar Rasool then joined the camp that dominated Lahore. Sarfraz Nawaz chose to oppose the Sharifs and kind of faded away, his recent fame a result of his frank remarks about cricketing events.

Likewise, Qasim Zia as a PPP member won from Lahore when the Sharifs were away and lost from the city when they were around. Abdul Hafeez Kardar’s victory in 1970 was also a result of the force of the new, as personified by the head of his party, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Now Aamer Sohail has paid his courtesy call on Nawaz Sharif, a star who has really shone on the political stage of the country after having been first elected to the assembly in 1985 – along with Akhtar Rasool and Sarfraz Nawaz. Not just that, in the footsteps of hockey Olympians Muhammad Saqlain and Zeeshan Ashraf, Aamer Sohail has actually joined the PML-N, putting his faith in Mr Sharif’s ability to get the country out of trouble. This makes sense that the blessings from Sharifs have guaranteed success for budding politicians in Lahore and a lack of them have seen the fall of the most stoic of players.

Asked about his choice when he had around one of his celebrated former captains running his own charge for a victory against corruption, Sohail responded: “There is a huge difference between politics and the cricket.”

The cricketer will have to adapt as a politician.—Correspondent