Instead, the only question that keeps coming back is, why does this feel quite so momentous when the majority of Pakistanis follow cricket via radio or TV, which will still be an option, and when history has shown that games don’t lose any of their potency if they’re played in the Gulf (and here — although it feels impolite to do so in an Indian newspaper — I can’t help but invoking Miandad’s six off the last delivery of the Nehru Cup final in 1986, played at Sharjah). The most obvious answer is a purely selfish one: I may no longer live in Karachi, but I’m there every year during the winter when international cricket is played; on the other hand, I’ve never been to Dubai and feel no urge to go there (or didn’t until I saw the picture of that cricket ground).

But the other reason has to do with the particular history of my hometown, Karachi, and international cricket. Through much of the 90’s, when my cricket fervour was at its peak, Karachi was considered too unsafe for international cricket. So time and again, even though the National Stadium is the second-largest cricket ground in the country and Karachi the largest city, visiting teams would leave Karachi off their itinerary. Between the West Indies’ test match in Karachi in 1990 and their next test there in 1997 only one test match was played at the National Stadium (Australia, in 1994). Thanks to the 1995-96 World Cup the ODI scene look a little better, but if you excluded the World Cup matches, the scene was fairly dismal — Australia, England, India: none of these teams came to play between December 1990 and September 1997. And the West Indies, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, South Africa played only one game each during that time. This at a time when Pakistan’s cricketers were the World Cup champions (1992-6).

... contd.