AFTER having seen little to no international cricket at home for nearly a decade, Pakistan finally has much to look forward to. A busy home season is lined up that will see Pakistan host Zimbabwe for an ODI and T20 series beginning Oct 30. The next year should hopefully see the arrival of leading teams like South Africa and New Zealand, followed by England and Australia in 2022, besides some ‘A’ team tours. This is a significant development that is primarily the outcome of a dramatically improved security situation at home and the efforts of the PCB. Besides presenting a softer image of the country, these tours will lift the morale of this cricket-crazy nation that has seen little sporting excitement in the decade gone by. Up until early last year, the return of full-fledged international cricket to Pakistan had appeared a remote possibility. Despite visits by a World XI and a few other under-strength teams, there was not much to dispel the gloom. The major teams continued to stay away in the aftermath of that 2009 firing incident on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore. The long period of isolation for Pakistan seemed like an eternity.

But a high-profile, incident-free tour by the MCC in November last year convinced the ICC and others that Pakistan was ready to host foreign teams again. The two-Test tour by Sri Lanka last December saw international cricket restart in the country. That was followed by a Test and T20 tour by Bangladesh and a month of contests by the PSL which was entirely relocated on home turf for the first time since its inception in 2016. A key catalyst in this turnaround for Pakistan cricket has been the positive feedback of the 40-odd foreign players who participated in the PSL V matches in Karachi, Lahore, Multan and Rawalpindi early this year. It is imperative that the government and PCB play the part of perfect hosts to foreign teams to keep up the momentum.

Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2020