There is nothing that demonstrates a sense of unity and normalcy as watching a major sporting event together at a packed stadium. That tradition and the sense of joy that comes with it was brought alive once more after an interval of almost a decade at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore where some 25,000 people gathered to watch the Peshawar Zalmi take on the Quetta Gladiators in the final of the second edition of the Pakistan Super League. The Peshawar Zalmi won in the end but the match wasn’t just a memorable happening for Peshawar and its players. The entire nation rejoiced what was dubbed by many as the return of international cricket to this violence-hit country. This then became much bigger than just a cricket final. The biggest victory perhaps was claimed by Lahore, whose citizens braved the inevitable inconveniences caused by the security arrangements. For this, immense credit goes to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif who could have taken the easy way out by letting the final take place in Dubai like last year but stood firm and threw their weight behind the idea of having the match played in our own backyard. For the PSL itself, the one man who deserves kudos the most is Najam Sethi – the man behind the rise of a fledgling Twenty20 league that is already being seen as a force to be reckoned with. While most of his predecessors toyed with the idea of launching Pakistan’s own T20 league only to discard it, Sethi picked up the project and made it happen. And now he has delivered on his promise of staging the PSL final on home soil. It is a pity, though, that unnecessarily irresponsible and petty slurs against the PSL final were thrown around by people like Imran Khan whose fans are also said to have also raised slogans inside the stadium – even while enjoying the match.
That said, the PCB and the government cannot succumb to the temptation of basking in the glory of a successful PSL final without planning for the future ahead. The fact that most of the PSL’s biggest overseas stars like Kevin Pietersen stayed away from the final underlines the fact that the true revival of international cricket in Pakistan is a gradual process. The holding of the PSL’s final game in our country is one important step towards that target. What we need is to create an environment where international teams can feel safe about coming to Pakistan for full tours that often span over several weeks and even months. That task, however, is outside the PCB’s domain. The sort of security measures that were in place for Sunday’s match in Lahore can be made possible for one-off matches but not entire cricket series. In the meantime, our cricketers and top officials will have to lobby with the rest of the cricket world. Personal relations matter, something we saw when Peshawar Zalmi managed to convince its players to visit Lahore while Quetta Gladiators failed. In the end, Quetta had to pay the price for it as the absence of key players like England’s Pietersen and Luke Wright and South Africa’s Rilee Rossouw left it depleted for the final against a formidable Peshawar team. One hopes that more than one match of next year’s PSL is held in Pakistan and more overseas players follow in the footsteps of Darren Sammy and experience the joys of playing cricket in Pakistan. For now, though, we can seize the moment and rejoice a day that was a win for the people of Pakistan – and hope we see many such days in the near future.