The team Pakistan defeated at Lord’s became the cause of their fall from world cricket when the Sri Lankan team was attacked in Lahore earlier this year. The bus driver who braved bullet injuries and drove them to safety on that fateful day was reported by Dawn on June 22 as hailing Team Pakistan: “We desperately needed this victory because there’s so much happening around our country,” said Mohammad Khalil. “ Sri Lanka is our friend and it will remain our friend, but I wanted Pakistan to win today’s match.”

Daily Times wrote an editorial on June 23, juxtaposing the ethnicity of some players with the volatile situation in Pakistan’s north. “The Pakistani team was symbolically led by a Pashtun, Younis Khan, one of the three in the team whose mother tongue is Pashto, the same spoken by warlord Baitullah Mehsud who has proven to be the scourge of the Pashtun people before threatening the very existence of the state of Pakistan. All-rounder Shahid Afridi, whose co-tribesmen are suffering under the savage rule of a local warlord in Khyber, lifted himself from a long trough of indifferent batting. The second symbolic challenge to Baitullah Mehsud was the bowling of another Pashtun, Umar Gul, who ended up with the biggest haul of wickets in an international Twenty-20 match. The man who was expected to do the job Gul did was Suhail Tanvir, the fast bowler from Punjab. He was the bowler the teams feared most, but he failed to fire throughout the championship, as if to make possible an appropriate symbolic display of Pakistan’s struggle against terrorism.”

It’s not just the press or the people who are gushing over this vicotory, but also the ruling class. The News reported on June 22: “ ‘The president has announced Rs 1 million each for captain Younis Khan and all-rounder Shahid Khan Afridi,’ said Salman Faruqi, secretary-general to the president. ‘All the remaining members of the Pakistan cricket team and others will get Rs 0.5 million each. And each member of the team will be decorated in a unique way worthy of the occasion,’ he said.”

Daily Times appeared to celebrate the reported celebrations in Srinagar. On June 22, it carried an interesting report: “Srinagar erupted in celebration as Pakistan beat Sri Lanka and scores of Kashmiri youth poured on to the streets and lit firecrackers. The youths also chanted pro-Pakistan and pro-freedom slogans as Indian paramilitary troops stayed in their bunkers, witnesses said. Thousands of Kashmiris were glued to their TVs to watch the tense final. “It is a great victory and one day I hope we will merge with Pakistan,” said a die-hard Pakistani cricket fan, Muhammed Yaseen.”