It’s 12 a.m. in Karachi. Sixty-five-year-old housewife and grandmother Jan Bibi sits glued to the television, alone with a cup of chai in her hand. It’s not the latest drama serial, nor the late-night news roundup that keeps her awake and sitting before the TV till that late hour. It is something very different: the Pakistan Super League. She is watching the Karachi Kings attempting to chase a lofty total set by the Lahore Qalandars.
Staying up to watch cricket is not something unusual for Jan Bibi; in fact very much the contrary. “I like to watch cricket, even though I cannot even read the names off the TV,” says Jan Bibi, who hails from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, and who moved to Karachi at a very young age after marriage. “Girls were not sent to school in our village back then, so I could never learn to read. But I can read what counts in cricket - the numbers!” She laughs. When asked which team she supports in the PSL, Jan Bibi replies, “I don’t support any particular team, I watch all matches impartially. But I did like it when Darren Sammy posed for the selfie with that invisible mobile in his hand. Maybe that makes me a Peshawar supporter? I am from Peshawar, after all!” But here she was, watching Lahore play Karachi with the enthusiasm of a schoolgirl at a Justin Bieber concert, supporting just one thing: cricket.
Shane Watson bowls in the match between Islamabad United and Lahore Qalandars
Din Mohammad intends to bring his wife and family to Dubai one day - the day he can afford a seat in the stands, not in the food stalls
Far away, in a very different world, Courtney lounges in her armchair, sipping some lemonade on a lazy Saturday afternoon watching Karachi play Quetta. Courtney hails from Kingston and is trying to watch her fellow countryman Chris Gayle ply his trade in the PSL – something he has been unsuccessful at achieving to his fans’ satisfaction, so far. “Gayle is and has always been my man in the ring,” comments Courtney, “I’ve followed him everywhere – Australia, South Africa, England, India, Bangladesh, wherever he’s gone to play T20 cricket. Pakistan naturally isn’t any different.” Although she knows Gayle hasn’t replicated his famed, thunderous T20 form for his Pakistani team so far, Courtney expects and waits patiently for her favourite cricketer to bounce back into good form soon enough to help his team to the top of the table, and beyond. “I’m rooting for whichever team Gayle is playing for. It was Lahore last year, and it’s Karachi this year.”
“Making time for cricket is hard when you live in a very different time zone, and in a country that seems not to know anything nor care at all about it,” says nineteen-year-old Salal, who studies biochemistry at San Diego State University. “When it’s 12 in the afternoon back home in Islamabad – where I come from – it’s 11 o’clock the previous night here in San Diego. So, when it’s time for the first PSL match for the day to start, it’s around 3 in the morning here, and around 8 when the second is on its way. I would normally watch the matches online, on the go, on my phone or iPad, anywhere and everywhere – in the subway, the café, on my way to classes, in the library – shh, don’t tell anyone,” his voice bubbling with gleeful mischief as I talk to him on the phone. “What do you think is so special about the PSL?” I ask Salal, and he replies, “Well, quite simply, the cricket! I’m a Pakistani, and a cricket fanatic – if that’s not synonymous with the former. I’ve watched cricket since before I could even speak, and I follow almost all the leagues around the globe. The PSL is even more special since its Pakistani, and the cricket is great – it feels great to watch it,” he comments. “I’m not about to give up on cricket just because I’ve come here to the States to study. Back home, I used to wake up at 2 in the night or just not sleep at all to watch the series in Australia and New Zealand – how is this any different?” The only difference, Salal agrees, is that there are very few people around to share his passion for cricket with. “There are very few Pakistanis around here, so there is a serious lack of that feeling of comradery. You know, when it’s the World Cup and you look around and nobody seems to care that Pakistan is playing India? And nobody even knows how crazy the match between Peshawar and Lahore was the other day! It’s like getting your nose out of an engrossing book and having no one to talk about it with. It feels sad. But there is a small community of South Asians here, which kind of makes up for it, sometimes.”
Inside the Dubai International Stadium, Din Mohammad flings his arms around rapidly to pack me a Whopper. He looks at me and instantly knows that I am a South Asian, courtesy the colour of my skin. “Do you live here?” He asks me in Urdu. I tell him I am a sports journalist, in Dubai only to cover the PSL. “Where are you from?” I ask him. “Sialkot,” he tells me, “I came here only last year to try and earn big bucks for my family back home. Well that hasn’t quite happened,” he adds with a sheepish smile, “But it’s good that I get to work here in the stadium doing what I love the most – not flipping burgers, of course,” he laughs, “Watching cricket!”
"As soon as Pakistan was being brought back onto the global sporting and cultural map - with many thanks due to PSL and its organisers - enemies of the state started conducting these attacks once again"
“Whom do you like to watch the most?” I ask him. “I like the big hitters. Afridi, Gayle, McCullum, Umar Akmal. Most of them are not firing this season, but I still like them.” When asked which team he likes the most, Din Mohammad answers, “I like watching the Lahore Qalandars, they have been playing well this season. I like watching good batsmen. I like Karachi Kings a bit too, because of Shoaib Malik, who is from my city. I have heard that the Sialkot Stallions would be playing in the PSL soon, and I desperately wait for them to join the league! I would support my city’s team very passionately!”
Din Mohammad intends to bring his wife and family to Dubai one day – the day he can afford a seat in the stands, not in the food stalls.
Peshawar Zalmi celebrate a wicket in the February 12, 2017 fixture with the Lahore Qalandars
“I stopped watching cricket when Misbah-ul-Haq retired from the ODI format,” says recently wedded twenty-one-year-old Samina, “He was the only player I loved to watch. We are not from a very liberal background so we were never allowed to play sports, but I do still enjoy watching them on TV. PSL came a blessing for me since I could continue to watch my favourite cricketer in the short format.” Residents of Quetta, Samina and her three sisters have no qualms about supporting teams from other cities. “You can probably guess that I am an Islamabad supporter. My elder sister supports Karachi, because she really likes Mohammad Amir. She and I often quarrel over who the better out of our two favourite players is, even though there is no comparison since one is a batsman and the other a bowler. But it is still fun – quarreling over favourite players and teams is part of the sibling rivalry, our favourite part.”
34-year-old software engineer from Lahore, Omar, thinks the recent bout of terrorism in Pakistan has been engineered to stall Pakistan’s recent progress in the sporting world. “We hadn’t had these blasts in quite some time now. Sporting events were finally returning to the country; recently Pakistan played Iran in the Davis Cup in Islamabad and that went smoothly. Some of us friends even went to watch the tie, it was quite a treat,” he comments, “But as soon as they announced that PSL’s final would be held here in Lahore, half-a-dozen deadly attacks have taken place on the trot. Who can’t see the pattern here? As soon as Pakistan was being brought back onto the global sporting and cultural map – with many thanks due to PSL and its organisers – enemies of the state started conducting these attacks once again. They don’t want Pakistan to flourish and earn foreign exchange through these much-needed international events.” A cynic by nature, Omar doesn’t think the PSL final would take place in Lahore this year, but the cricket fan in him desperately wants it to. “Before the series against Zimbabwe in 2015, it had been ages since I last watched a cricket match live in a stadium. Maybe not since 2006. That’s nearly nine years. Nine years! And in 2009 the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team took place, since when there has scarcely been any cricket in the country. For a nation so crazy about cricket, this is extremely unfair. It’s like keeping a coffee addict away from his morning fix – it can truly be hazardous to our national health!”
The unveiling of the PSL trophy in Dubai earlier this month
Thirty-nine-year-old house wife Naila agrees that cricketing events should take place in Pakistan, despite not being a huge fan of the sport. “I have never been very sporty,” Naila comments, “I grew up with two sisters and a brother and even though my brother and father watched a lot of cricket, my sisters and I had no interest in watching any kind of sport. We were more interested in watching rom-coms and drama serials and following the latest fashion trends,” she adds. “But now that I have two teenage sons and a sports-crazy husband, I am dragged into the soccer mom role whether I like it or not. I have to pick my sons up from school in the afternoon and it’s all sports from that point onward: take them to their football and taekwondo practice, come home and watch them play FIFA on their PlayStation, or watch cricket or football on the TV, or fight over which player is better than the other. It’s a madhouse – I could never have imagined. The craze has infested my home to the extent that even I know who the captain of the Quetta Gladiators is!” She gives a short, amused laugh. “It’s my sons’ favourite team.”
Naila says her sons were really young when cricket stopped featuring in an average Pakistani’s outdoor life. “Sure, they can still play the sport, but it’s nothing like it was a couple of decades or even 6 or 7 years ago,” she adds with a certain gloom in her voice, “My husband tells me stories of how he used to go to the stadium to watch cricket with his brothers and friends, here in Rawalpindi. ‘There was no need for heavy security,’ he tells me, ‘We moved in and out of the stadium with ease, sometimes even ran into the players.’ I know how special that experience would be for my sons, if they could ever meet their favourite players. Right now, it’s more or less just a dream for them. But it’s not an impossible dream. The PSL administration has showed us that it is possible to bring cricket back to Pakistan, and I admire their resolve to make it happen despite the recent turn of events in the country.”
Chris Gayle displays his team colours
A series of horrific terror attacks in the country left the possibility of a PSL final being held in Pakistan an open question
“I stopped watching cricket when Misbah-ul-Haq retired from the ODI format,” says recently wedded twenty-one-year-old Samina. “PSL came a blessing for me since I could continue to watch my favourite cricketer in the short format”
“I read somewhere that India had had the most number of blasts in 2016? That didn’t seem to affect their cultural activities. Why does it affect ours?”
Eighty-five-year-old grandmother of twenty and great-grandmother of four, Noreen has seen many generations of cricket in her life. “We used to listen to the matches on the radio in Kardar and Fazal Mahmood’s time. Everything was very slow in those days. Matches went on and so did life, it wasn’t as though we had to abandon everything and sit glued to one spot just to follow the cricket. The commentary was beautiful, too – not rushed, not overly excited, but calm and graceful,” she comments with a gleam in her eyes, “Of course times have changed – as they must. The TV arrived, followed by this One-Day cricket format. Hanif Mohammed, Majir Khan, Abdul Qadir, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, Imran Khan. I have seen them all. They were all the rage during their times and everybody used to love them. My children fought over Zaheer and Imran just the way their children fought over Wasim and Waqar. And now it’s time for their children to fight over Quetta and Peshawar! It is like what they call…deja vu. It is like I see history repeat itself before my eyes every few decades.”
“Whom do you support in the PSL?” I ask Noreen.
With the same mischievous gleam in her eyes, Noreen answers, “The same as the last eighty years: Pakistan.”
