HYDERABAD: As the glitz and glamour of the HBL Pakistan Super League returns for an eighth edition from next week with hi-octane action across four venues, Niaz Stadium’s agonising wait for revival of national and international cricket continues.

Once an important centre for hosting international and domestic cricket as the only stadium in Sindh after Karachi’s National Stadium, Niaz Stadium now lies in ruins. Quetta’s Bugti Stadium hosted a PSL exhibition match on Sunday between Quetta Gladiators and Peshawar Zalmi and while there has been talk of taking the PSL to Peshawar, the Niaz Stadium doesn’t even enter the conversation.

It’s fallen off the radar despite Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah claiming in 2018 that the Niaz Stadium would host PSL matches in the following year.

For now, citizens of Hyderabad have been left reminiscing about the glorious times when the venue hosted top international matches and Pakistan’s star players were seen in action.

It was here in 1983 that Javed Miandad scored an unbeaten 280 against India. “As ninth grade student, I wanted to see the action,” Akram Shahid, now a senior photographer, told Dawn. “I managed to get some scoreboard work with local contractual scorers. While busy in scoring behind [old] scoreboard, we were anxiously waiting for Miandad’s 300 but skipper Imran Khan declared the innings.”

A year before that, Jalaluddin had taken the first hat-trick in One-day International cricket in a match against Australia at the Niaz Stadium.

In 1987, it was the venue for the opening match of the World Cup between Pakistan and Sri Lanka and a decade on, it hosted a ODI between Pakistan and India.

That game, won convincingly by Pakistan, is also remembered for events leading to it with then-Pakistan Cricket Board chief Majid Khan expressing dismay over a grassless patch in the outfield at the Eid Gah end. “I’ll hang you upside down if it gets seen on television,” Majid would tell venue official Hafeez Mughal, whose team would treat that in time for the game.

By the turn of the millennium, though, the stadium’s condition went from bad to worse before then-district nazim Kanwar Naveed Jamil handed over stadium to PCB under a memorandum of understanding for administrative purpose and infrastructural development including new outfield, structures’ reconstruction.

After taking over in July 2007, the PCB organised a one-dayer between Pakistan and Zimbabwe in January 2008 but the Niaz Stadium was largely maintained for first-class matches and it gave an opportunity to cricket fans to see former skipper Mohammad Hafeez, Mohammad Asif, Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir, Kamran Akmal and Umar Akmal in action for their respective departments.

With the PCB not honouring the terms, the Municipal Committee Qasimabad — the ground’s custodians — revoked the MoU and took control of it again in April 2018 and that step saw cricket leave the Niaz Stadium.

“It [the committee] doesn’t have professional expertise to maintain the ground,” former Hyderabad Region’s cricket association president Mir Suleman Talpur told Dawn. “Only the PCB can do it and it must do it now.”

Existing conditions of venue merit massive development and Sindh Chief Secretary Dr Mohammad Sohail Rajput had spoken to former PCB chief Ramiz Raja about revival of cricket in the city. But then came change of command in the board.

For now, Niaz Stadium has been relegated to hosting local tournaments and even tape-ball matches. It faces an unending decay with the outfield in a bad shape, general enclosures crumbling and the conditions of the dressing rooms and the pavilion deplorable.

“When the National Stadium, Peshawar’s Arbab Niaz Stadium, Multan or Bugti Stadiums can be reconstructed and renovated why can’t they do the same with the Niaz Stadium,” wonders Mir Suleman.

He, however, believes things might change if the PCB or the Sindh government takes the initiative. But till then, the Niaz Stadium — where Pakistan has never lost a Test or ODI — will have to wait.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2023