Grounded in history
The greatest gift from the British colonialists to the subcontinent would have to be the English language and the glorious game of charming unpredictability — cricket.
The language is as important as the attraction that drives swooning fans to various cricket grounds of the world where the game is being played, locally or internationally, which indeed has prompted the establishments responsible for promoting the game to develop their playing fields, grounds and facilities for holding domestic or international games.
From Kolkata to Karachi there are now hundreds and thousands of clubs, academies and venues that have their own pride of place in the history of the game. In undivided India, names such as the Bombay Gymkhana, where India for the first time played their official home Test in the 1930s, Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai and the Eden Gardens in Kolkata boasted unmatched facilities found anywhere in India. And now they are a lot more modern than ever before.
Let’s take a look at some old cricket grounds in Pakistan as a new one is developed
The parts that became Pakistan may not have had such imposing grounds but they did have a few like Peshawar Gymkhana, Pindi Club, Lawrence Gardens, Aitchison College, the Dring Stadium in Bahawalpur in the north and boasting of as much history in the south, too.
The Karachi Gymkhana ground was developed in 1886, the Karachi Parsi Institute (KPI) came about in 1893, Muslim Gymkhana, Hindu Gymkhana, Polo Ground, Jehangir Park besides a lot more to name, have all had their own glorious past which no doubt helped Pakistan’s cricket culture develop fast and quick before our cricket board could be recognised by the International Cricket Council as a full member, which happened within five years of the country’s existence.
With so much progress being made in the game over these years — from infancy to adulthood — there have been rapid advancements and changes at all levels. New grounds have come up in every major city of the country and the speed with which things have been changing the transformation in every sector remains mindboggling.
In my profession as a cricket writer, I have been involved in the game for more than four decades. I am fortunate enough to have seen most of international cricket grounds all over the world except Bangladesh, where I have never been and am now aiming to go, to complete that circuit soon.
It will be tough for me to go into detail about the grounds that I have seen and reported matches from because it will require hundreds of pages to describe them all along with their salient features. So I shall restrict myself to Pakistan and grounds with a lot of history and significance that we can be proud of.
The latest that I have been to, I discovered is in the north of Karachi — the Naya Nazimabad Lawai Stadium, which, no doubt, one day will be the centerpiece for at least first-class games in this part of Pakistan. I will talk about it later but first let me highlight a few of the historic grounds in the country.
The most important and one of the oldest among them is, of course, the Pindi Club ground in the heart of Rawalpindi (then Rawal Pindee), which even from colonial times has remained a garrison town. It was here in 1893 that the grandson of Queen Victoria, Prince Christian Victor, posted as an officer, hit 205 playing for the King’s Royal Rifles against The Devonshire Regiment. The double century is considered to be the first-ever on the soil, which is now Pakistan. The only Test played on this ground was in 1965 between Pakistan and New Zealand. It also boasts an ODI v West Indies in 1985 and a 1987 ICC World Cup match between Pakistan and England. Pindi Club is now called Army Sports Ground with new stands but the old pavilion from the Raj still exists.
Bagh-e-Jinnah (Lawrence Gardens previously) has its own aura and proud history. Developed in 1880, the ground’s majestic pavilion, designed by one G. Stone and built by Bhai Ram Singh, according to Najam Latif the curator of the cricket museum, stands as a monument within the premises to this great game in Punjab.