Local organiser fears cricket standard will plunge like hockey

LAHORE: Tariq Sarwar, one of the senior cricket organisers of the country, has said that the current cricket administration is throwing the game into an abyss.

“The current administration has reduced domestic cricket to zero in Pakistan. The PCB is not an official club nor has it organised cricket at that level. It’s the clubs that have given top cricketers to the country,” said Tariq in an informal chat with this scribe.

He said that club cricket was the nursery of the country’s cricket. “If you don’t know the initial mnemonics of language you cannot speak proper English,” he said.

He said he feared the game to go to ruins if the situation remained the same. “The structure of cricket in South Punjab is very good, but we fear it to slump with cricket being limited to a few regional teams,” he added.

He said that the first Test match in the history of Pakistan was played in Bahawalpur.

Tariq, who played cricket alongside Waqar Younis, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Mushtaq Ahmed, said that the club Waqar came from was run by a small bicycle shop owner Sufi Siddique.

“Local organisers hold and supervise cricket by spending money from their own pockets as sponsors are not interested at club level. But the way things are going on, cricket will be worse than hockey in a few years,” he said.

He added that the local cricket organisers spend tens of thousands of rupees annually on buying balls only.