Truly historic, or mere fool’s gold?
The year 2017 has been a year of ups for both Pakistani sports, and Pakistani sports enthusiasts. The sports starved nation has been served with one after another spectacle that they could not even have dreamed of viewing, even in the “good old” “pre-Sri Lankan team attack” days.
Despite hosting the final of the second season of the Pakistan Super League in March, that came two weeks after a couple of blasts had targeted Lahore’s Charing Cross Area and Z-Block coffee house in the Defence Housing Authority, the event didn’t quite get an ‘international’ zing to it. This was best manifested by the now notorious ‘phateechar’ remarks of PTI chairman Imran Khan, who said that the foreign contingent that played for Quetta Gladiators and Peshawar Zalmi in the final, was mediocre – despite the fact that Zalmi had World Cup winners in Marlon Samuels and Darren Sammy.
Hence, truly international sports arrived in Pakistan through a most surprising inlet, this year in July; with the help of a very unusual sport that Pakistanis have only recently begun to develop a taste for: football. The cricket crazy nation that calls hockey its national game, has historically had little enthusiasm for the most popular sport in the world, however, the news of the arrival of some of football’s biggest names on Pakistani soil widened many eyes, loosened many jaws, made all the big headlines, and – most importantly – drew huge crowds. Indeed, where in the world would the likes of Ronaldinho, Ryan Giggs, and Robert Pires go unnoticed?
Ironically, it was the sport least favoured in Pakistan that seemed to have opened the gate for the one most favoured: last month, the PCB organized and held a wildly publicized T20 series between World XI and Pakistan XI at Lahore’s Gaddafi stadium, termed the “Independence Cup”. Barring the series with Zimbabwe in 2015, the event was the first of international cricket organized in the country since the Sri Lankan cricket team’s bus was attacked in the very same city in 2009. Cricket – and sport – in Pakistan seems to have come a long way since then. Or has it?
Where there are internationally lauded headline-making initiatives, there almost always is a set of skeptics who throws shade over the intentions behind the organization of the said initiative, or over its utility, or over its effectiveness. The Independence Cup is naturally no different. When its proponents would enthusiastically term it a very loud return of international cricket to Pakistan, skeptics would call it a one-of event. After all, the Zimbabwe series was the “original” return of cricket to Pakistan, and where did that take us? Proponents would commend the PCB for taking all the right steps that eventually attracted international cricket and cricketers to Pakistan, critics would dismiss them all as political stunts. After all, the accusations are that “people who know nothing about cricket” are running the PCB and working for the betterment of cricket solely in order to benefit certain vote banks. Skeptics would also dismiss high-profile international cricketers’ decision to play in Pakistan as monetarily motivated, and would call such people who believe their move was well-intentioned as “naïve”. After all, where were many other “international stars” when their teams needed them in the final of the Pakistan Super League as recently as this March?
For every compliment, there seems to be a “but” lingering on the tip of the skeptic’s tongue. But do we need cricket when there are much more pressing issues in the country that need to be dealt with, first? But couldn’t the money that was used to bring international cricketers to Pakistan be used to build hospitals and roads? Scratch that, we do not need hospitals and roads, we need good doctors and good education. But isn’t modern education an invention of the colonial Brits? Do we need that? We really are better off with madrassah education. But why isn’t the government cracking down on madrassahs? They are creating terrorists!
The Independence Cup was fine, but was it worth the risk? What if a blast took place – would it have been worth the lives lost? We can see that people wanted to watch the event, but they clogged the whole city, we do not need cricket that leads to us getting stuck in traffic for hours! We need to get home quicker – the government should build wider roads. Oh, no, scratch that, of course we don’t need roads.
Ah, the Skeptic. The Skeptic could always be trusted to raise an eyebrow over even the most seemingly well-meaning of actions. The Skeptic wants all the fruits of the effort, without any of the sweat, the risk, or the opportunity cost. The Skeptic is never satisfied – not with anybody’s intentions, which more often than not are unknown to most outside of the concerned person’s mind, or with anybody or anything’s usefulness and utility.
Yes, it cost a lot of money to bring international cricket to Pakistan, but did you not want the Pakistan of the ‘90s and early 2000s to return? Were you not the one who lamented the loss of healthy entertainment in the lives of the average Pakistani? Were you not the first to raise fingers when Pakistani cricket was riding its sharp decline, only recently? Then why are you not the first to applaud when the efforts of a “patched together” PCB results in the same Pakistani Cricket team winning the Champions Trophy? Yes, the international cricketers’ arrival in our country might have been partially motivated by money (“of course, what do they care about aiding the return of cricket to Pakistan?”), but why does their intentions bother you so much? Is it not enough that you were given the chance to view the likes of Hashim Amla, Paul Collingwood, Faff du Plessis, George Bailey, Imran Tahir, and Morne Morkel, ply their trade right in front of your eyes? Is it not enough that these cricketers offered their skills, their competitiveness, and their cricketing mastery to you, for your viewing pleasure, that they must further justify to you the intentions behind their decision to do so, too? Yes, the roads were clogged on match days, as they would be all over the world in the event of the organization of such a huge event – it is only a testament to the importance of the Independence Cup in the eyes of Pakistanis.
