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Small step towards normality for Pakistan?

An International World XI captained by Sri Lankan legend Sanath Jayasuriya and featuring several former South African and West Indian Test players will take on a Pakistan All Stars side led by Shahid Afridi in two Twenty 20s in Karachi on Saturday and Sunday.

It is the first cricket featuring top foreign players in Pakistan since a deadly militant attack on the Sri Lankan team bus in Lahore in March 2009, which prompted overseas sides to stop touring the cricket-mad but troubled country.

After a three-and-a-half year drought, enthusiasm for this weekend’s games is high, with fans snapping up tickets and players talking up the short tour, a personal initiative of the sports minister of Sindh province Mohammad Ali Shah.

“I took it as a challenge,” Shah, himself a club-level cricketer, told AFP. “I don’t claim it will instantly revive international cricket in Pakistan but I am sure that these matches will change views on our country.”

The Lahore attack, which left eight Pakistanis dead and seven of the Sri Lankan contingent injured, turned the Pakistan team into cricket nomads, forced to play “home” series at neutral venues in England, New Zealand and the UAE.

While security in much of Pakistan has improved since 2009, bombings and shootings are a near-daily occurrence as the country battles homegrown Taleban, and the chance of any high-profile tours looks very distant.

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) almost convinced Bangladesh to tour in April this year, only to have their hopes dashed by the Dhaka High Court, which blocked the tour on security grounds.

Ehsan Mani, the former president of the International Cricket Council, the sport’s governing body, hailed this weekend’s matches as a step on the way to normalising Pakistan’s position. “This is a commendable effort,” Mani said. “The visiting team has some well known players and I am sure when they return they will tell people about Pakistan and it could prove a small step in a long process.”

But the PCB has done its best to keep this weekend’s matches at arm’s length, terming them “unofficial” and insisting it bears no responsibility for security, fearful that any breach would set back the rehabilitation process.

Indeed, since the Bangladesh humiliation the PCB has been very reluctant to say anything about its efforts to persuade overseas sides to visit, leading many to wonder if they are making any efforts at all in this direction. Mani criticised the PCB for its apparent lack of a clear strategy.