LAHORE/ISLAMABAD – Taking no chances with the crowd for the first Test match to be held on Pakistani soil for over a decade, the Pakistan Cricket Board has urged the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) to implement the yet to be announced Plan C of the Azadi March inside Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium next month.
PCB officials privy to the development have informed The Dependent that JUI-F Chief Fazlur Rehman has been given an official communique on behalf of the board requesting that the party consider staging a sit-in inside the Rawalpindi stadium from December 11 to 15.
“There’s a chance it might not even go as far as the fifth day, but yes we’ve informed Maulana that Plan C – which also stands for Cricket or Crowd, whichever he might prefer – could be perfectly suited for the Sri Lanka Test series,” the PCB official said.
The PCB official’s request is designed to make sure that the national politics helps the board out this time around after having been at the wrong end of a defiant Karachi rejecting the centre’s plans for the city during the ODI series against Sri Lanka in September.
“We feel that the cricket series and Azadi March both being staged together and getting the same airtime would make for unprecedentedly entertaining television, which would be great for sponsors of both the cricket series and the Azadi March,” the PCB official maintained.