Cricket the Great Equaliser

Crick­et is a part of our nation­al iden­ti­ty. In the 1980’s and 90’s it over­took hock­ey and squash as the nation­al sport. There was no need to offi­cial­ly acknowl­edge this, since every­body involved felt it. Crick­et had well and tru­ly become a major gal­vanis­ing force for Pak­ista­nis every­where. Up until the 70’s, crick­et had gen­er­al­ly been a sedate affair. Defen­sive tac­tics, method­i­cal bat­ting and pri­vate­ly schooled ban­ter pre­car­i­ous­ly tied the var­i­ous crick­et­ing nations of the time loose­ly togeth­er as a kind of flop­py shami­anah, gen­tly nest­ing over cucum­ber sand­wich­es and an increas­ing num­ber of drawn test match­es.

Then, every­thing changed. First, the ODI World Cup was launched in 1975. The West Indies, with all their pomp and class, stream-rolled their way to vic­to­ry and announced the arrival of excit­ing one day crick­et. Soon after, Ker­ry pack­er intro­duced the con­tro­ver­sial rebel league of World Series crick­et, which show­cased the tal­ents of sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al super­stars , includ­ing a select group of Pak­ista­nis such as Javed Mian­da, Asif iqbal, Imran Khan and Zaheer Abbas.

This was the dawn of the age of inter­na­tion­al super­stars crick­eters cap­tur­ing the imag­i­na­tions of entire nations and not just sea­soned crick­et fans. Crick­et in Pak­istan blos­somed dur­ing this peri­od, where squads tran­si­tioned from the old guard; pri­vate school boys from Lahore and Karachi, to the new blood; young boys from the cult Pak­istani tra­di­tion of ‘tape ball crick­et’ emerg­ing from all the far flung cor­ners of our nation.

In 1987 Pak­istan vis­it­ed the beau­ti­ful island of the West Indies, to face the feared pace attack and tow­er­ing bats­men that had reigned supreme over test crick­et for over a decade, defeat­ing every tour­ing par­ty that came their way. What Pak­istan achieved has wide­ly gone down in crick­et­ing folk­lore as amongst the best test series ever fought. Under Imran Khan’s coura­geous lead­er­ship and sen­sa­tion­al dis­play of inswing­ing York­ers speck­led with reverse swing leg before appeals, Pak­istan defied all odds and returned from the Caribbean unbeat­en. A year lat­er Pak­istan and India met at the Shar­jah cup final, a match that would go down in his­to­ry as the epit­o­me of this south Asian rival­ry that already rivalled the his­tor­i­cal Aus­tralian and Eng­lish bat­tles. With 6 need­ed off the last ball for vic­to­ry, Chetan Shar­ma prowled up to the crease hop­ing to deliv­er any­thing but the juicy full toss he offered, which was fero­cious­ly wal­loped by Javed Mian­dad into the mid­wick­et stands, and into the hearts and minds of near­ly every Indi­an and Pak­istani who saw it.

A nation­al love affair with crick­et had swept through the nation. Inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion basked the Pak­istani pub­lic in pride and heroes were born; the young left-arm fast bowl­ing sen­sa­tion Waseem Akram, the fear­less and inspi­ra­tional leader Imran Khan, and the ulti­mate hus­tler and run machine Javed Mian­dad. What these crick­eters gave to Pak­istan at that time was exact­ly the kind of unadul­ter­at­ed and uplift­ing enter­tain­ment that sport is so revered for. They made us feel like win­ners, they inspired us to com­pete and push our­selves, to chal­lenge the very best and show results by mer­it.

Crick­et evolved into one of the few tru­ly egal­i­tar­i­an spaces in Pak­istan. We final­ly had a plat­form where peo­ple from dif­fer­ent eth­nic back­grounds, var­ied aca­d­e­m­ic and pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions and wide rang­ing socio-eco­nom­ic real­i­ties could inter­act on the same field as equals. They were able to put aside fac­tors that had kept them apart in their dai­ly lives and instead, focus on aspects that brought them togeth­er. What mat­tered on the crick­et field was how fast you bowled, how much you swung or spun the ball and how far you hit the ball. No one cared how wealthy you were, how well you recit­ed Urdu poet­ry or wrote Eng­lish lit­er­a­ture or which tribe your fam­i­ly belonged to. It was your tal­ent and skill that earned you respect on the crick­et pitch.

Crick­et was rapid­ly becom­ing the great equal­iz­er of a nation that had strug­gled to find plat­forms to unite its dynam­ic yet diver­gent peo­ple. Watch­ing Inza­mam ulhaq, a young lad from Mul­tan, and Wasim Akram, a rapid­ly matur­ing fast bowler from hum­ble back­grounds in Lahore, dom­i­nate oppo­si­tion over the years, crick­et con­tin­ued to bring our coun­try­men togeth­er from dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try, You­nis Khan and Mis­bah ul haq from Khy­ber pakhtoonkhaw, Yair Hameed from Peshawar, Inza­ma­mul­haq from Mul­tan, Shoaib Akhtar and Waqar You­nis from Pin­di, Shahid Afri­di from the Pathan com­mu­ni­ty of Karachi, Dan­ish Kane­r­ia from the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty of Karachi, Muham­mad Yousuf (for­mer­ly Yusaf yuhan­na )from the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty of Lahore, Shoaib Malik from Sialkot, Muham­mad Hafeez from Sar­god­ha and the list went on, a case study in diver­si­ty and cul­tur­al cohe­sion.

Recent­ly the vicious face of ter­ror­ism has threat­ened to undo the hard work that the brave and inspir­ing young crick­eters of our coun­try had done. The heinous and unfor­giv­able act of a hand­ful of out­laws against our guests, the Sri Lankan crick­et team, stripped Pak­istan off the rights to host any inter­na­tion­al crick­et, includ­ing the much her­ald­ed 2011 World Cup. For the first time in our his­to­ry, the crick­et-lov­ing mass­es of Pak­istan were denied the plea­sure and joy of watch­ing their heroes host inter­na­tion­al teams on home grounds. Crick­et was at risk of being tak­en away from Pak­istan.

Hav­ing already faced the dis­grace, time is right to reignite all the hype that has fuelled our love affair with crick­et. Let us come togeth­er for the revival of inter­na­tion­al crick­et by mak­ing Pak­istan a peace­ful state. Let us reach out to all the beau­ti­ful and diverse peo­ple of Pak­istan, our coun­try­men, and find a com­mon cause. This is our chance to rise against forces that have threat­ened to tear away at the fab­ric of our soci­ety and show to them that we will unite and fight for a plat­form that has always strived to make us equals in our own coun­try.