Abdullah719
T20I Captain
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2013
- Runs
- 44,825
When he talked about the shooting three years afterwards while on England’s tour of the UAE, Ahsan Raza said that two things had saved his life. An ICC handbook — not so thick as you might think given cricket’s myriad laws and regulations — that protected his stomach a little and Chris Broad, the match referee, who in the aftermath of the attack had the wherewithal to try to stem the bleeding.
Raza was the reserve umpire for the Test between Pakistan and Sri Lanka that was abandoned after the terrorist attack in Lahore in March 2009, which resulted in cricketing exile for Pakistan and near death for him. He took two bullet wounds, one to the lung, remained in a coma for three days and then in intensive care for 27 more as he recovered. The surgeons used 20 pints of blood to stabilise him and 80 stitches to sew up the tear to his stomach.
He couldn’t walk for six months and few thought he would umpire again. On Tuesday, he was one of the standing umpires for the opening match of the World XI v Pakistan T20 series, intended to be the first step towards the return of more regular international cricket to the country. When he recovered fully, Raza said it was his dream to stand in international cricket. When he achieved that, he said it was his dream for international cricket to return to Lahore.
There were stories like that everywhere you looked this week. One observer posted a tweet about a barber in Bahawalpur who was so desperate for a ticket to the match that he was offering free haircuts for a year. Another reporter found spectators who had travelled 800km to be there. Another, who had been at the abandoned match in 2009, had travelled for more than 26 hours to make the match.
Then there were the players, of course, the ten in the Pakistan squad who had never played in a home international, five of whom made the starting XI on Tuesday, and who played in front of home support in an international for the first time.
To think what they were feeling, imagine what it must have felt like to be in James Anderson’s shoes during the Lord’s Test. The 500th wicket moment, holding the ball high to enormous acclaim. Career-best figures, and walking off ahead of the pack to a standing ovation. A winning series in which he was England’s player of the series, ending a summer during which he had taken more Test wickets than any England seamer since Alec Bedser. These were some of the most memorable days of his career. Now imagine he had done all that in a home Test but at a neutral venue, in front of an empty stadium in a foreign land. The achievements would not have been diminished but the glory was heightened by the sense of occasion, the venue and the support of family and friends. An empty stadium in Abu Dhabi, shorn of family, friends and supporters, would not have felt the same.
This is the reality that Pakistan’s cricketers have coped with for the past eight years through no fault of their own, isolated as they have been in the UAE because of security concerns. For many of them, career highlights have come in “home” Tests that have been home only in name. Azhar Ali, for example, scored a triple hundred in Dubai against West Indies in 2016. Misbah-ul-Haq scored the joint fastest Test hundred at Abu Dhabi against Australia in 2014 and Shoaib Malik a career-best 245 at the same venue against England a year later. All played to the silence of an empty stadium.
Gradually, sports and sportsmen have begun to tiptoe back into Pakistan’s hazardous waters. In 2015, Zimbabwe played three one-day and two Twenty20 matches in Lahore. The Pakistan Super League final, involving among others, Dawid Malan and Chris Jordan, took place in Lahore in March. In July, Ryan Giggs and Ronaldinho, with other former football internationals, played exhibition matches in Lahore and Karachi. International tennis, snooker and squash tournaments have been staged.
Now, international cricket has returned this week in the shape of a World XI — made up of cricketers from seven nations, but not, notably, India — who will play three T20 matches. Next month, Sri Lanka will return to Pakistan for a T20 match for the first time since they were targeted, although the remainder of the series will take place in the UAE. Sri Lanka’s willingness to come back depends on the smooth incident-free return of international cricket this week.
These tentative steps back to normality have come on the back of a concerted effort to make Lahore safer. In October 2016, the Punjab Safe City Project was initiated, taking in Lahore initially, and scheduled for six other cities in the province in due course. Eight thousand surveillance cameras have been installed in cooperation with the Chinese company Huawei, with the accompanying control centre also Chinese-run.
Not that it has prevented atrocities happening: in July, the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 26 people in Lahore. They promised further atrocities in retaliation for the army’s activities in the tribal lands. In February, 13 were killed by a suicide bomber, for which a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban took responsibility. Safety and security, then, remain the overwhelming concerns this week, rather than the cricket itself.
What steps have been taken? As a consequence of the financial hit taken during 2009 and 2010 and subsequent loss of revenues, the Pakistan Cricket Board asked the ICC for financial help. Agreement has been reached whereby the ICC will underwrite the security arrangements for any international cricket played in Pakistan, and for the next three years of the Pakistan Super League.
Reg Dickason, England’s security adviser, has been given the same responsibility for these matches. It is an arrangement that is profitable for him, but may also be profitable for Pakistan. Dickason has the absolute confidence of England’s players, and others from around the world. If he says that security is satisfactory, then it is more likely that players will be persuaded to go. Those playing this week have been paid around £80,000 for their efforts — a tidy sum, but not one worth considering if safety is compromised.
Will they find a game diminished in the absence of international cricket? Hard to say. Anecdotal evidence gleaned from a trip to Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar and Kashmir 18 months ago suggested a country still in love with the game, with parks, roadsides and scrubland in constant cricketing use. And the national team have been remarkably successful in those eight years away: rising to the top of the Test rankings in 2016 and winning this year’s Champions Trophy. The flame has kept burning.
Still, there is not much long-term future if a team cannot play in front of its supporters and cricket is not widespread enough globally to cast Pakistan permanently into the wilderness. Fingers crossed, then, for an incident-free few days. For Ahsan Raza, Tuesday’s experience must have felt, in more ways than one, like something of a miracle.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...s?shareToken=3cf5a603c7a16c03ff71507b44fc3cef
Raza was the reserve umpire for the Test between Pakistan and Sri Lanka that was abandoned after the terrorist attack in Lahore in March 2009, which resulted in cricketing exile for Pakistan and near death for him. He took two bullet wounds, one to the lung, remained in a coma for three days and then in intensive care for 27 more as he recovered. The surgeons used 20 pints of blood to stabilise him and 80 stitches to sew up the tear to his stomach.
He couldn’t walk for six months and few thought he would umpire again. On Tuesday, he was one of the standing umpires for the opening match of the World XI v Pakistan T20 series, intended to be the first step towards the return of more regular international cricket to the country. When he recovered fully, Raza said it was his dream to stand in international cricket. When he achieved that, he said it was his dream for international cricket to return to Lahore.
There were stories like that everywhere you looked this week. One observer posted a tweet about a barber in Bahawalpur who was so desperate for a ticket to the match that he was offering free haircuts for a year. Another reporter found spectators who had travelled 800km to be there. Another, who had been at the abandoned match in 2009, had travelled for more than 26 hours to make the match.
Then there were the players, of course, the ten in the Pakistan squad who had never played in a home international, five of whom made the starting XI on Tuesday, and who played in front of home support in an international for the first time.
To think what they were feeling, imagine what it must have felt like to be in James Anderson’s shoes during the Lord’s Test. The 500th wicket moment, holding the ball high to enormous acclaim. Career-best figures, and walking off ahead of the pack to a standing ovation. A winning series in which he was England’s player of the series, ending a summer during which he had taken more Test wickets than any England seamer since Alec Bedser. These were some of the most memorable days of his career. Now imagine he had done all that in a home Test but at a neutral venue, in front of an empty stadium in a foreign land. The achievements would not have been diminished but the glory was heightened by the sense of occasion, the venue and the support of family and friends. An empty stadium in Abu Dhabi, shorn of family, friends and supporters, would not have felt the same.
This is the reality that Pakistan’s cricketers have coped with for the past eight years through no fault of their own, isolated as they have been in the UAE because of security concerns. For many of them, career highlights have come in “home” Tests that have been home only in name. Azhar Ali, for example, scored a triple hundred in Dubai against West Indies in 2016. Misbah-ul-Haq scored the joint fastest Test hundred at Abu Dhabi against Australia in 2014 and Shoaib Malik a career-best 245 at the same venue against England a year later. All played to the silence of an empty stadium.
Gradually, sports and sportsmen have begun to tiptoe back into Pakistan’s hazardous waters. In 2015, Zimbabwe played three one-day and two Twenty20 matches in Lahore. The Pakistan Super League final, involving among others, Dawid Malan and Chris Jordan, took place in Lahore in March. In July, Ryan Giggs and Ronaldinho, with other former football internationals, played exhibition matches in Lahore and Karachi. International tennis, snooker and squash tournaments have been staged.
Now, international cricket has returned this week in the shape of a World XI — made up of cricketers from seven nations, but not, notably, India — who will play three T20 matches. Next month, Sri Lanka will return to Pakistan for a T20 match for the first time since they were targeted, although the remainder of the series will take place in the UAE. Sri Lanka’s willingness to come back depends on the smooth incident-free return of international cricket this week.
These tentative steps back to normality have come on the back of a concerted effort to make Lahore safer. In October 2016, the Punjab Safe City Project was initiated, taking in Lahore initially, and scheduled for six other cities in the province in due course. Eight thousand surveillance cameras have been installed in cooperation with the Chinese company Huawei, with the accompanying control centre also Chinese-run.
Not that it has prevented atrocities happening: in July, the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 26 people in Lahore. They promised further atrocities in retaliation for the army’s activities in the tribal lands. In February, 13 were killed by a suicide bomber, for which a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban took responsibility. Safety and security, then, remain the overwhelming concerns this week, rather than the cricket itself.
What steps have been taken? As a consequence of the financial hit taken during 2009 and 2010 and subsequent loss of revenues, the Pakistan Cricket Board asked the ICC for financial help. Agreement has been reached whereby the ICC will underwrite the security arrangements for any international cricket played in Pakistan, and for the next three years of the Pakistan Super League.
Reg Dickason, England’s security adviser, has been given the same responsibility for these matches. It is an arrangement that is profitable for him, but may also be profitable for Pakistan. Dickason has the absolute confidence of England’s players, and others from around the world. If he says that security is satisfactory, then it is more likely that players will be persuaded to go. Those playing this week have been paid around £80,000 for their efforts — a tidy sum, but not one worth considering if safety is compromised.
Will they find a game diminished in the absence of international cricket? Hard to say. Anecdotal evidence gleaned from a trip to Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar and Kashmir 18 months ago suggested a country still in love with the game, with parks, roadsides and scrubland in constant cricketing use. And the national team have been remarkably successful in those eight years away: rising to the top of the Test rankings in 2016 and winning this year’s Champions Trophy. The flame has kept burning.
Still, there is not much long-term future if a team cannot play in front of its supporters and cricket is not widespread enough globally to cast Pakistan permanently into the wilderness. Fingers crossed, then, for an incident-free few days. For Ahsan Raza, Tuesday’s experience must have felt, in more ways than one, like something of a miracle.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...s?shareToken=3cf5a603c7a16c03ff71507b44fc3cef
