FOR once, it makes a pleasant change to write about something different from the usual, something positive, successful, controversy-free, and of unblemished integrity. How many know that there are women in today's Pakistan who dare to play cricket and that there is a Pakistan Women's Cricket Control Association (PWCCA) with a team of cricketing women who go abroad and play for Pakistan?
Shaiza and Sharmeen Khan of Karachi started playing cricket with their elder brother and his friends when they were about the same height as a cricket bat. Shaiza took to batting and Sharmeen to bowling. Their parents habitually spent an annual summer holiday in England, so when the girls were in their early teens they joined the Winchmore Hill Cricket Club and started playing in earnest. Their cricketing skills grew whilst they were at boarding school in Shropshire, where as cricketers they graduated from club level to league and county levels.
At Leeds University in 1992 Shaiza was appointed the first non-British captain of the ladies team, and after she graduated Sharmeen took over the captaincy. The Leeds team under Shaiza rose from a rating of 32 to the trophy holders of the 300-odd women's university and college teams in England.
The resolve to form a women's cricketing body in Pakistan which would be accepted by the International Women's Cricket Council (IWCC) came to the two sisters when they were summoned to Headingley to provide bowling practice to the England squad who were preparing for the 1993 Women's World Cup (the fifth of the series). The resolve was strengthened when they sat at Lord's watching England play New Zealand in the finals, and they vowed to themselves that they would bring honour and accolades to their motherland and be members of a team from Pakistan when the next World Cup series came around.
They returned to Pakistan in 1995 and set about forming an association that would qualify for the IWCC and travelling around Pakistan looking for good cricketing girls. They found them and by 1996 women's teams were raised from Punjab and Sindh. The first national tournament was held at the Karachi Gymkhana and Sindh won convincingly in the three matches played.
By the end of the year, confirmation of the PWCCA's membership was received from the IWCC. The next step was the international debut of the Pakistani team, and both Australia and New Zealand agreed to a tour. Three international one day matches played outside Pakistan were all that was needed to qualify for the sixth Women's World Cup to be held in India at the end of 1997.
They played 18 matches in New Zealand, including two one day matches, winning thirteen. In Australia they played one one-dayer and five side matches against the champions and though beaten in all matches gained valuable experience. To gain further experience for the World Cup, that summer six players signed on for the English cricket season, and in October they rendezvoused at Lahore to set up a camp for the World Cup. After the usual trials and tribulations blockages, and the general nationally adopted negative non-cooperative attitude towards anything innovative, the Army stepped in and provided the team with a cricket ground at Tufail Road.
Women's Cricket Australia and the Australian Sports Commission sponsored a coach, Jodie Davis, a former player. Word was spread that a team was being raised and 3,000 girls turned up at the camp, an amazing number proving that in the male-oriented society of the Republic of Pakistan women still had high hopes. A team was selected in mid-November and set off for Delhi for the opening ceremony on December 5 1997.
They played five matches against Denmark, England, Australia, South Africa and Ireland. Excusably and expectedly, all were lost, the team being the babies of women cricket at a mere three weeks of age. All the women's' cricket teams of the Western world have been playing for over fifty years, India has had a team for 35 years, and Sri Lanka for 13 years.
In April 1998 the team toured Sri Lanka, where it played its debut test and three one-day matches, again losing all to an experienced team on its home ground. That summer six players again went to play in England, a practice now established on an annual basis.
In 1999 Shaiza was asked to play for the MCC in its debut match in May at the Bank of England cricket ground, the first time in 212 years since the founding of the MCC that a women's team had found acceptance. Shaiza faced the first ball in this historic match, scored the first run, and hit the first boundary for the MCC Women's Cricket Team. There were four fixtures for the 1999 season, and Sharmeen and Kiran Baloch, an all-rounder, arrived to also play for the MCC in the last two matches. The three girls were the only overseas players to participate.
In July 2000 the team toured Ireland, playing four one-day matches, and their second test, again losing all.
In August the team arrived in England to play their first match there, a forty-over one-dayer against High Wycombe (Kiran's old team which she has captained since 1998), which they won easily. They scored 297 for 5 off 40 overs, with Shaiza, the Captain, at 76 not out, Sharmeen, the Vice-Captain scoring 48, Nazia Nazeer, 36, and Kiran 38. High Wycombe were all out for 101, Sharmeen, Nazi and 12-year old Sajida Shah (the youngest international player ever) each taking three wickets.
They moved on to Charterhouse School at Guildford where they played against the MCC and scored a famous victory. It was a rain-hit match. The MCC batting first scored 143 for 2 off 40 overs and Pakistan made 144 for 3 off 29.1 overs. The winning streak is on. A team from Europe has been invited to play here in Pakistan next year.
All this is due to the determination of the two sisters, both working women, both educated and knowledgeable, both earning their keep and paying for their cricketing expenses. It is also due to the generosity and understanding of their father, Mohammad Said Khan, and a few family friends and supporters, who provided the initial financing and much of the subsequent financing for the team. The present MD of PIA, Sher Afghan, has been most helpful in giving discounted tickets.
As for moral support, they have been propped up and encouraged by the team's patron, Anita Ghulam Ali, our forward-looking educationist and provincial minister, by Omar Kureishi, Arif Abbasi, Hanif Mohammad, She editor Zohra Karim and Women's Cricket International editor Afia Salam. The sporting press of Pakistan in general has also been most supportive.
The only discouraging and blocking factor has been the cricketing bureaucracy of Pakistan which has done its very best to ensure that the team was not formed, and when against all odds it was formed, that it was not allowed to play in Pakistan or elsewhere. Fortunately, the bureaucracy is not always invincible.
When not playing cricket or involved in cricket affairs, Shazia who qualified at Leeds University in industrial textile Engineering, and Sharmeen who qualified in textile management, are business executives in their father's enterprise. The company manufactures and exports Axminster and Wilton carpets, but now is suffering and working only one shift a day due to the unfair competition faced from smuggled carpets. This is not a joke. Carpet rolls of 12 feet width and 30 feet length are regularly smuggled into the country and are bought by all the major establishments and large buyers such as hotels.
Pakistan may not have won a bronze, silver or gold medal at the Olympics, but our young girls have won the first MCC international one-dayer, the equal of a platinum-gold, and the Pakistan Women's Cricket Team stands tall.
They are proud of the letter of congratulations received from patron of the MCC, Queen Elizabeth.