As human victims of terror attack are buried, nation mourns the other casualty - cricket

• Entertainment-starved country feels loss deeply
• Foreign teams are urged not to let violence win

Saeed Shah in Lahore and Maseeh Rahman in Delhi
The Guardian, Saturday 7 March 2009
Article history

There were two sets of mourners in Pakistan this week. Friends and relatives of those caught up in Tuesday's brazen attack on a convoy of visiting Sri Lankan cricketers in the heart of Lahore buried their dead and lamented the cost of a nation's slide into violence and terrorism.

Then there was the rest of the nation, mourning the death of international cricket in Pakistan. In a country where governance, economic development and security have gone backwards with each passing year, the Pakistan cricket team was a national mania, providing hope and vicarious glory to 160 million people. The attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team has ended all that for now.

From the children who improvise games using tennis balls wrapped in thick black tape, bricks as wickets, barefoot in the back streets of the big cities, to the businessmen who stop working for an entire Test match, the significance was clear: foreign players will shun Pakistan. The 2011 World Cup, due to be co-hosted here, will be taken away.

Such is the obsession for the game that after the attack all that many Pakistanis could immediately think was that it was a "conspiracy to take away the World Cup".

"This is a Muslim country. There are no night clubs here. For entertainment there is cricket or you can go to a restaurant with your family. But the first priority is cricket," said Shahzad Mehmood, a 28-year-old accounts clerk who had come to the site of the terror attack to lay flowers. "When we play cricket, or watch cricket, we feel so happy."

Pakistan's stultified development, with religious conservatism getting an ever tighter grip, means leisure pursuits are few. With unemployment high, there are few options to divert youthful minds from boredom and disenchantment. Cricket goes a long way to filling the entertainment gap. Not domestic cricket, which is woefully organised and watched by hardly anyone, but the national team.

The current captain, Younis Khan, put it bluntly: "If cricket is snatched away, doesn't it look like more people like the ones who attacked Sri Lanka will be produced?"

Imran Khan, the former Pakistan captain, now a politician, said it was cricket that helped Pakistan and other commonwealth countries achieve dignity in tumultuous post-independence years.

"The colonial hangover was removed by the cricket team," he said. "When I started we were the generation that couldn't possibly think of beating England. Then we began beating England. Much more important than beating other teams was to beat England because they were considered the master, the ex-colonialists. It was a country regaining its honour and pride through cricket, getting that self-esteem that colonialism destroys."

On match days the nation huddles around televisions. At the weekend, and on weekday afternoons, every scrap of waste ground, every park and yard is filled with boys and young men playing cricket. The big entertainment for a Saturday night is to rig up some lights in the street and play right through until dawn, all the kids in the neighbourhood joining in. During Ramadan, the month of fasting when people can only eat after dark, night cricket on the streets takes over. People play all night, sleep all day. Special leagues for Ramadan are set up in some places.

The head of the Pakistan cricket board is appointed by the president of the country and is answerable only to him. When there's a change in head of state, the chairman of the PCB always follows.

Pakistan once led the world at hockey and squash. But that is long past. It is Pakistan's international cricket stars on billboards and in television adverts, selling shampoo and mobile phones.

An artificially created country when the British left India, Pakistan is made up of four provinces, three of which have breakaway movements. Those regional rivalries are forgotten when cheering for the national cricket team.

"It [cricket] is integral to the federation. It connects the people," said Irshad Niaz, a 53-year-old businessman, also standing at the site of the terror attack. Niaz remembers fondly how he once saw Viv Richards, the celebrated West Indies batsman, in Lahore, in the 1980s. "It was inspiring for me just to see him." Now a generation may grow up without seeing foreign stars - and their own heroes. The progress of Pakistani players will suffer too - promising youngsters tend to be tried out in home series.

"Terrorism has won," said Imtiaz Hussain, an insurance worker in Lahore. "We will get to the point when we are on our knees and have to invite in America, or some other country, to take us over. This is a plot against Pakistan."

Among militant groups, though, cricket is considered an imperial throwback. The banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, suspected of involvement in the recent Mumbai and Lahore attacks, called upon Pakistanis to give up the sport. "The British gave Muslims the bat, snatched the sword and said to them: 'You take this bat and play cricket. Give us your sword. With its help we will kill you and rape your women,'" the LeT said in its magazine.

But most Pakistanis disagree. "The game of cricket is next to religion in Pakistan," said Waseem Bari, a former Pakistani wicket-keeper. "Of course there's been a tragedy but the solution is not to isolate Pakistan. When a person is down, one way is to put him down further, the other thing is to give a hand of support."