The return of International Cricket to Pakistan,a reality?
Almost every cricket fan knows about the incident that happened during march 2009 when 12 armed terrorists attacked a number of buses one of which was a bus that was carrying members of the Srilankan Cricket team including world-wide renowned players such as the then captain Mahela Jayawardene and vice-captain Kumar Sangakkara who were also injured during the attack. Below is a picture of renowned player Ajantha Mendis who was injured during the attack.
The casualties included 6 members of the police department and 2 innocent civilians. This incident left the whole cricket fraternity shocked and made it impossible for international cricket matches to take place in Pakistan for a long time. This incident made ICC to change the venue country of the 2011 Cricket World Cup to Bangladesh from Pakistan and Bangladesh hosted a cricket world cup for the first time besides India and Srilanka. Since then no international matches were played in Pakistan until May 2015 when Zimbabwe toured the country for a two T20 and three ODI’s in which the host country dominated the visitors throughout the series. That was the first positive sight for International cricket returning to Pakistan and the cricket board of Pakistan has not looked back since. In 2017 PCB decided to host the Final of the Pakistan Super League in Pakistan which was a success in a way because many foreign players notable 2 times T20 World Cup winning captain Darren Sammy visited Pakistan for the match and was also awarded the Man of the Match which saw his team Peshawar Zalmi comfortably defeating Quetta Gladiators by a convincing margin of 58 runs. Other notable foreign players included Chris Jordon from England and Marlon Samuels from the Windies that played in the final. That year PCB hosted 3 other matches between the World XI and Pakistan during September. Members of the World XI included many famous names of the cricket fraternity which are listed below alongside their nationality
· South Africa
David Miller
Hashim Amla
Faf Du Plesis(Captain)
Morne Morkel
Imran Tahir
· Australia
Tim Paine(Wicket-keeper)
George Bailey
Ben Cutting
· Bangladesh
Tamim Iqbal
· West Indies
Darren Sammy
Samuel Badree
· Srilanka
Thisara Perera
· New Zeland
Grant Elliot
· England
Paul Collingwood
The 3 matches that took place were action packed and without any doubt it was clear that the Pakistani crowd enjoyed every bit of it. Babar Azam was awarded the player of the series and many foreign players returned back with a positive view about International cricket returning to Pakistan. The PCB took this as an inspiration and organized 3 playoff matches in Pakistan of the 2018 edition of PSL where even more foreign players took part. It was reported that tickets for the playoffs were all sold out within 15 hours. The following season of the Pakistan Super League was even more successful as all the playoff matches alongside some matches from the last part of group stage took place in Pakistan. But despite everything International cricket truly returned to Pakistan when the Srilankan Cricket Team agreed to tour the country for a 3 match T20 and 3 match ODI series. The chances of the visitors touring Pakistan was very dim as many players were not sure about their safety until the Srilankan Cricket Board gave the green signal. While the whole country of Pakistan was celebrating International Cricket’s return to their home,the same couldn’t had been said about India. Many rumours had spread that the Board of Control for Cricket in India(BCCI) had threatened the Srilankan players that they wouldn’t be allowed to play IPL if they toured Pakistan. While the rumours still haven’t been proved true, it’s not a crime to say that Indians weren’t very happy with International Cricket returning to Pakistan as many Indian users badly criticized the decision of the Srilankan Team to tour Pakistan. While the PCB has done a great job hosting the series till now which resulted in no serious problems to occur except for when the ground lights went out for a brief moment during the 2nd ODI at National Stadium Karachi . There has been no dominant side of the series till now as both the sides are fighting very competitively which has resulted the ODI series to be drawn with the first game getting washed out. Both the teams are eyeing towards winning the T20 series which the visitors are leading now after winning the 1st T20 match comfortably. The ongoing tour is a beacon of hope for the Pakistani people for International Cricket to return to Pakistan.
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