Empty promises, wasted time
The return of international cricket to Pakistan has been this nation’s dream since the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore in 2009. In the years that followed it also became a popular slogan for each chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) who took charge after the horrible incident.
While all foreign teams refuse to tour the country for obvious security reasons, even the Pakistan cricket team has to play its home series at neutral venues in the United Arab Emirates and England.
It was on March 3, 2009, that masked terrorists attacked the Sri Lankan team’s bus on its way to the Gaddafi Stadium from the hotel in Lahore. The attack left eight people dead and seven visiting players wounded. Former Test cricketer Ijaz Butt was the PCB chairman at the time.
Despite the passage of nearly five years, no PCB chairman could convince any team, even minnows like Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and Kenya, to visit this country, what to speak of inviting highly-ranked Australia, England, India, South Africa and West Indies.
It is normal for every new PCB chief to announce that he will bring back international cricketing activity to the country. And every time a chairman says this, his statement gets wide coverage in the national and international media. The slogan for the revival of international cricket in Pakistan is similar to the slogan of solving ‘the Kashmir issue’, once the most popular motto of Pakistani politicians, something that (once upon a time) won them the support of the masses during election campaigns.
Ijaz Butt’s successor Zaka Ashraf raised the slogan of “making efforts for the revival of international cricket” at least more than a dozen times during his first tenure. Then Najam Sethi, the interim, caretaker or acting chairman (whatever you want to call him) took up the slogan but there was no serious effort seen from him regarding the matter.
Zaka Ashraf’s claims also seem hollow when you see how the PCB under him did not lend any moral support to the former Sindh Minister for Sports (late) Dr Mohammad Ali Shah, who succeeded in organising two festival international matches featuring International World XI and Pakistan All Stars at the National Stadium Karachi in October 2012. Had he supported Dr Shah by allowing the Pakistan national team to play matches instead of the unofficial ‘Pakistan All Stars’, the confidence of foreign players to play in a secure atmosphere in Pakistan would have been restored. But a golden opportunity was missed there.
Zaka Ashraf announced several times that he was leaving no stone unturned in reviving international cricket in Pakistan. He had even gotten approval for the purchase of bulletproof buses as part of the efforts to persuade foreign teams to visit here.
It was in November 2011, that Zaka Ashraf had termed the year 2012 as the one that will see the revival of international cricket in Pakistan. He had told media that he would be visiting India and Bangladesh and invite them to visit Pakistan. The second time he said this was in January 2012, when he promised to bring international cricket back to the country as it was his foremost priority and the board was in constant touch with the federal government to lure foreign teams to tour Pakistan once again. He also tried to convince Bangladesh to take a short tour comprising two Twently20 matches in the backdrop of bargaining for the ICC vice president’s slot. In this regard, he even held a meeting with the then Home Minister Rehman Malik. However, no headway was made during the whole of 2012, though in October of that year, Zaka again expressed optimism that he would succeed in bringing back international cricket to Pakistan as he was in negotiation with his counterparts in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe to send their teams here. Nothing happened.
When Najam Sethi took charge of PCB in July 2013, he held a marathon interaction with the Karachi media where he stated (unsurprisingly) that international cricket would be revived in Pakistan. He revealed that he had sought the help of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to do this. “We have requested the prime minister to help us in this regard and we are going to meet him very soon,” he vowed but it’s another irony that his meeting with the PM could not take place and the interim chairman returned from Islamabad with his dream not realised.
During the five-year drought of international cricketing activity in Pakistan, the PCB bigwigs have had the opportunity to reorganise domestic cricket to bring it at par with Australia and England. Instead, their attention remained on carrying out routine work. The format of domestic tournaments have been changed frequently but only for the worse and in the current season six events started simultaneously to further mess up the matter and confuse the local cricketers.
Some of the five local grounds in Karachi prepared and maintained by PCB during the tenure of former chairman Lt-Gen (retd) Tauqeer Zia are in shambles. During the five years of isolation from international cricket these, along with many more grounds, could have been maintained in a better way.
It may be mentioned here that South Africa cricket authorities during the period of that country’s isolation from international cricket during the apartheid regime reorganised their domestic cricket structure. During that period a number of different organisations including South Africa Cricket Association (SACA), South African Cricket Board of Control (SACBOC) and the South African Cricket Board (SACB) were running the game. But in 1976 these three organisations agreed to establish one single board to govern South African cricket. However, the new board — the South African Cricket Union (SACU) — was not recognised by a small dissenting group in the SACBOC, who set up the South African Cricket Board (SACB). In June 1991, the South African Cricket Union and the South African Cricket Board merged to form the United Cricket Board of South Africa (UCBSA). The unification ended enforced racial separation, and only a month later, on July 10, 1991, South Africa was re-admitted as a full member of the ICC.
Prior to the March 2009 tragedy, Pakistan remained away from international cricket on two other different occasions. Following the 1971 war that separated Pakistan’s eastern wing, international cricket activities here remained suspended for quite some time until a World XI toured Pakistan and restored the confidence of foreign countries.
An unfortunate incident also took place in the same year when the Pakistan team was touring England and, after the second Test match, a charity organisation in London decided to help war-affected people in East Pakistan through a cricket the auction of a cricket bat. The bat was to be signed by English and Pakistani players, but some Pakistani players refused to sign the bat. Luckily, this matter was sorted out after an order from the government of Pakistan.
The doors of international cricket again shut on Pakistan following the bomb explosion near the New Zealand team’s hotel in Karachi in May 2002 which killed 11 French sailors. Following this, almost all foreign teams including Australia refused to tour Pakistan owing to security reasons. Pakistan had to play its ‘home series’ in Sri Lanka then.
It’s one thing that the various PCB chairmen could not deliver on their promises, but it’s quite another that not even a single one of them used this opportunity, however unwelcome, to prepare for the future.
The writer is a senior sports journalist.