A large metallic ball adorns one of Sialkot’s oldest and busiest traffic crossings — Shahabpura. The golden monument installed in the 1990s by once famous football producing firm, Saga, which no longer exists, is a celebration of the city’s proud and cherished heritage that dates back to the early 1900s: hand-stitched footballs.

The border city makes a large number of products ranging from walking sticks to leather gloves and garments to sports equipment and wear to music and surgical instruments for many major international brands and retailers in very small to bulk quantities.

Many of the goods produced by the city are unique to its industry and are still not manufactured elsewhere in Pakistan. But its global fame owes to the skills and hard work of its football stitchers working out of their homes in the city streets and its adjoining villages.

Sialkot, with a history of over 100 years of stitching footballs, emerged on the global sports map when the Tango ball made here for Adidas was used in the 1982 FIFA World Cup in Spain. Ever since, its balls have sold in millions around the globe and used in all major football tournaments around the world until the new FIFA rules favouring machine-made footballs of uniform circumference were adopted for the 2006 competition.

Safdar Sandal, a leading exporter of hand-stitched footballs and other sports goods and equipment, says rapid growth in use of machine-made and thermally bonded or machine-glued balls in the football-playing countries has seriously hurt the domestic producers during the last 6-7 years.

Pakistan’s share in the overall world football trade has dropped significantly from an estimated 70-75p to 40pc with the country producing just 22m balls last year compared with 40m in 2007. In hand-stitched category, Pakistan is still a world leader with a market share of 80-85pc.

Like many others he is optimistic about the future of the hand-stitched balls. “The world is reverting to hand-stitched balls on whose market we have a monopoly.” At present, the share of hand-stitched balls in the global output has plunged from 80pc to 45pc compared with 55pc for machine-made balls.

But it isn’t the only factor brightening up the chances of Sialkot’s re-emergence as the world’s ‘capital’ of football production. Pakistan’s main rival in this item, China, is becoming expensive and is forcing global sports brands to return to Sialkot — though mostly for machine-made balls this time around.

“Indeed, what happens in China affects our business more than any other (domestic or foreign) event,” Safdar laughs, adding, “Several large sports goods companies from Sialkot have started producing the much demanded machine-made balls. Some are also making thermo-bonded balls and they are getting big orders.”

Many are hopeful that the thermally bonded balls produced by Forward Sports for Adidas will be used in the FIFA World Cup this summer in Brazil.

“Forward Sports has received a very big order for supplying balls for one of the world’s largest sporting events. The use of the Made-in-Sialkot ball in it will definitely give a big boost to our industry in the years to come,” insists Khurram Anwar Khawaja of Anwar Khawaja Industries whose hand-stitched balls were used in the London Olympics in 2012.

Nevertheless, the former president of Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry feels that it will take Sialkot’s football industry another 4-5 years to regain the status of global leader.

“Several firms and exporters from Sialkot have already switched to machine stitching in the recent years to keep pace with changing global preferences and trends,” he says. Yet it will take a few more years for most exporters to start making the top-end thermo-bonded balls due to high cost of technology.

Until then Forward Sports will remain the only major producer of thermally-bonded balls due mainly to its association with Adidas, the official supplier of footballs for the FIFA cup tournaments.

The industry that contributes an estimated $150-225m or 10-15pc to the city’s annual export revenue of $1.5b provides jobs to approximately 60,000 men and women. Several thousand people, especially women who used to stitch balls at their homes have lost their livelihood because of the sharp reduction in the demand for hand-stitched balls.

Khurram says since production of machine-made balls takes place in factories it is not possible to re-employ the women who used to stitch balls at home. “If the government resolves the issue of power shortages, there’s every possibility that the manufacturers will bring machines to villages to facilitate the jobless women working from home,” argues Khurram, whose firm has been producing match balls for Select. He expects a 25pc increase in the city’s output of footballs this year.

This is the third article in a four-part series on the economy of Sialkot