Since the Lahore terrorist attack on Sri Lanka in 2009 Pakistan have wandered the cricket world like the Flying Dutchman, in a way depriving their players of their national identity
Dubai was pleasantly warm on Wednesday but I don't find it warming. It is clean, tidy, polite, friendly and buzzes with modernity. On the freeway that runs hard by where I am staying, the cars swish by: you don't see too many old bangers. Perhaps I am just jealous of the price of fuel ? about a third of what we pay in England, where we buy the third most expensive petrol in the world ? that drives them. (Although it is not the cheapest. In Caracas, I could fill up for less than the price of half a pint of beer at home.) Actually, though, I think it is because it has no soul. It is what happens with new towns and cities. Synthetic.
Dubai is a monument to mammon and the construction industry, built on money-no-object opulence. From this hotel, away in the hazy middle distance, rises the gigantic shard that is the Burj Khalifa, half a mile tall, 160-odd floors of it, the tallest building in the world (to the viewing platform of which you may turn up without booking and go for only �75). This is the ultimate metaphor for somewhere that thrives on biggest, richest, tallest, and most expensive, a place overflowing with so much loot that it can construct seven-star hotels and engineer hideous artificial islands on which to build ostentatious holiday homes for footballers.
Of course, we should not really be here at all. On Tuesday, in Dubai's International Cricket Stadium, England and Pakistan will begin the first of three Test matches to be played in the United Arab Emirates. Pakistanis have not played international cricket in their own country since that Lahore morning of 3 March almost three years ago, when six Sri Lanka cricketers on their way to the Gaddafi Stadium were injured in a terrorist attack and six policemen and two civilians lost their lives. Since then, Pakistan have played 27 Test matches, of which seven ? against South African, Australia and Sri Lanka ? have nominally been at home, but in reality have been on the neutral grounds of the Emirates in the case of South Africa and Sri Lanka, and Lord's and Headingley for Australia. It is a bizarre state of affairs, a cricket team without roots, reduced to wandering the world like the Flying Dutchman.
How this affects them is difficult to ascertain. One suspects that the impact on Pakistani cricket supporters has been less than it may have been on aspirational cricketers. Television rules the roost now and wherever it is that they are being played viewers still get to see the matches, while evidence of England's last visit to Pakistan suggests that ridiculous pricing, relative to wages, meant games were only sparsely attended in any case. So in that sense, little has been lost. But then consider the loss to the cricketers themselves, for in some respects they have been deprived of their national identity.
Some may argue that home advantage will be theirs in the forthcoming series on the premise that England will encounter subcontinental-type pitches. That, though, is only part of the story and misses the point that players draw strength from the comfort of their own environment. There is no match for representing your country within your country and that is a principal reason why touring can be so hard.
Personally, though, I shall miss the buzz of touring Pakistan, a country that has always brought its surprises on and off the field, and never failed to delight or turn up a tale. Who would imagine that the hotel in Peshawar would have a bar, and a proper solid mahogany one at that, with stools, and a barman, optics in the background and beer from the Murree Brewery. Or forget the incredible trip through the north-west tribal region to the very top of the Khyber Pass. Or the evening when a Peshawari nightwatchman shared his billycan of sweet milky tea with me while I waited for the telegraph office to telex copy. And against that came Lahore's parks and sophistication, and watching Inzi practise at the Gaddafi.
These are the sort of things I doubt very much I shall see again. Bombs are being detonated still, a massive one only days ago in Jamrud, through which we must have passed to gain the Khyber Pass. Yet it is crucial for Pakistan cricket in particular and world cricket in general that international matches return once more to Pakistan. There are signs. Giles Clarke, the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, has been chairing the International Cricket Council's Pakistan task group, charged with maintaining the cricket-playing profile of Pakistan while looking at the broader picture. Bangladesh look certain to become the first side since Sri Lanka to visit, and there are said to be moves afoot to persuade India ? whose withdrawal after the Mumbai atrocities was the reason for Sri Lanka touring in their stead ? to go as well. We shall see.
Whatever, the circumstances can never be the same again. An item in the local paper here says that the Pakistan Cricket Board has received government approval for importing bullet-proof buses and cars. You can see the point but why would anyone want to play in those circumstances?
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jan/11/pakistan-cricket-emirates
Andreas Engqvist Angelo Esposito Mitch Fadden Ilari Filppula
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