In Pakistan, the sport of Cricket is akin to a religious experience for many. It is ubiquitous in big and small cities. You can find people of all ages playing cricket on streets, in grounds and even on rooftops. I have done all three, but most of my cricket playing was on a rooftop. We lived in a second floor house atop the clinic building that my father had built in 1989, two years after I was born. It was in an exurban area, closer to the village than the city. We had no neighbors for almost a decade after we moved there, and I was reliant on my cousins visiting from the city to play cricket. In the meanwhile, I would strike the ball with a cricket bat up a slope that was technically roof shingles. Sometimes I would play with my father, who was not a big fan of getting bowled and he would try and get me out as soon as possible. I do not know much about my father’s sporting career but as far as I can tell, he was not very athletic at any point in his life. I would also sometimes play with my father’s clinical staff (when they had time), who would be classified as physician assistants or medical assistants in the U.S. They were older and bigger than me so they took it easy when I was there but were quite competitive among themselves. I was only five years old when Pakistan won the first world cup, in March 1992. I vaguely remember that evening, going to a bakery with my father to pick up bread or something else, watching on the TV in the bakery that our team had won. The win had occurred earlier in the day (since Australia, where the tournament was being played, is many hours ahead) and I saw it in the evening news.
My cousins on both sides were cricket fanatics, some more than the others. On my father’s side, one set of brothers had their own cricket club and competed in local competitions. On my mother’s side, one set of brothers competed in school cricket and played at some International tournaments as well. My step-uncles on my maternal side were also very competitive about cricket and my two uncles would fight a lot if things didn’t go their way. My mother loved having parties and inviting relatives over so while the adults spent time talking to each other, us kids played cricket on our rooftop. It was a concrete floor and space was limited so we came up with different rules as to what would constitute 4 runs or 6 runs or what would mean if the ball was hit and it landed downstairs (the batsman would be considered out). Since we played on a concrete floor, we used a tennis ball, which we would sometimes tape with electric tape (a.k.a. tape ball) to add some weight and pace. I was not a strong child so instead of being a fast bowler, I chose spin. My wrists are quite flexible and that is helpful when bowling spin.
Pakistan is famous for producing world class fast bowlers, all rage and fury. My favorite players growing up were finger spinners like Saqlain Mushtaq and Daniel Vettori (from New Zealand).
There were fights on our rooftop too, when the cousins were over. Since there were no umpires, everyone was free to decide if there was a close call. I, being a stickler for fairness, would try to stay true to the rules as much as possible but sometimes my older cousins would connive and gang up on me. I remember this one time it happened and since they were bigger than me, I couldn’t fight them either. I called my father, crying, asking him to enroll me in a karate club near his clinic. That never happened. I never won any physical fights, as a result. But I kept playing cricket, because there was not much else to do in the afternoons. Since, I played mostly with tape ball, I never graduated to the more serious, more ‘adult’ version of cricket, with a “hard” ball on a cricket pitch.
I followed Pakistan cricket obsessively in the 1990s, some of which was due to peer pressure from my cousins. After winning the World Cup in 1992, Pakistan cricket team had a teeter-tottering time, sometimes playing brilliantly, and sinking the next game. There was a lot of infighting, and allegations of match-fixing (most of it was confirmed in a Judicial Report issued in the early aughts). They lost in the semi-final of World Cup 1996 against the ol’ enemy, India. By the 1999 World Cup, Pakistan had a strong team, but nothing was ever certain about that team. There was countrywide hysteria about the cup. I bought the team kit as well. There was a competition by Pepsi in which some lucky winners were going to be awarded tickets to watch the World Cup in England. I collected bottle caps with a religious zeal but never got lucky. Pakistan cricket team did well in the group stages, but lost to minnows (at the time) Bangladesh. For the semi-Finals and Final, one of our family friends booked a large screen at a private club and invited our family. Pakistan won the semi-final and bottled the Final game against Australia (I team I hated passionately, even more than the Indian team). It was an anticlimactic performance.
When I went to boarding school at the age of 13, there was mandatory sports time and everyone had to be at the sports ground. I found a loophole and never went for the first two years that I was there. I had been enrolled in a madrassah when I was in 5th and 6th grade to memorize the Quran just like my father had. I memorized six out of thirty chapters but I was not very good at it and started forgetting the earlier chapters once I got to chapter five. As a result, my father and teachers at madrassah decided that I should not continue and I went back to regular school. In boarding school, during the dedicated sports time, me and another boy, who had actually memorized the whole Quran, would sit in the mosque and read the Quran. I did that for most of the first two years at school, until our ‘exemption’ was taken away. During sports hour, boys had to be present at the sports grounds, whether they played anything or not. The options included football (the real kind, not the U.S. version), field hockey, basket ball, and volleyball. I occasionally played some football, and was more of a ‘spoiler’ of the game than a skilled player. Cricket was played but only in a local tournament. We had limited access to TVs so we almost never watched a game live. In the 2003 World Cup, I remember watching a Pakistan versus India match in fits and spurts. I used to take an overnight bus from my hometown to the boarding school. I saw the first innings at home and a part of the second Innings, when India was batting, before leaving for the bus station. Pakistan’s fastest bowler was being smashed to bits by India’s batters. I remember watching a TV playing the match at a roadside tea shop on my way to the station. Pakistan lost that match.
At boarding school #2, the sports time had similar options. There were more options to play cricket and I once bowled an over for my wing’s team. I did play a lot in ‘unofficial’ tape ball cricket that was played on concrete or cement surfaces and was frowned upon by school officials. We had a mini-version that we played inside a big room (the TV room). While I was there, Pakistan visited India and there was a very good cricket series. We were not allowed to watch TV other than Sundays, and somehow a few courageous boys circumvented that. We would turn the TV on, mute the sound and one person would be on lookout for any school officials. Once I graduated from boarding school #2, I stayed with a friend for a month in Rawalpindi, preparing for the MCAT. Pakistan was visiting England during that time and we watched the test matches during our lunches at the local dhaaba. In one of those matches, the Pakistan cricket team got infuriated by poor umpiring and refused to come to the pitch after a lunch break, forfeiting the match to England.
My cricket-mania faded a little when I started medical school in Lahore. I had started following the English Premier League (EPL) in 2006. I don’t remember much about the 2007 World Cup, except that Pakistan couldn’t advance beyond the groups stages. In 2007, I remember watching Misbah-ul-Haq scuffing a chance to win the inaugural T20 World Cup in South Africa in the last over, against India. In March 2009, Sri Lanka was visiting Pakistan for a test series, since no one else wanted to visit a terrorism-prone country. Their team bus was attacked in Lahore, at a spot which I intimately knew, using the bus stop at that intersection on a weekly basis. The injured players were brought to the hospital associated with my medical school and treated in the ER where I worked a couple of years later. It was a big blow to Pakistan Cricket. My romance with Cricket finally ended in January 2010.
It was a typically cold January morning in Sialkot. I was at home for winter holidays, about to start my fourth year in medical school. My mother woke me up early in the morning and told me that my father was not feeling well. He had had chest pain most of the night and we decided to take him to the nearest private hospital where a cardiologist was available. They collected blood for checking his Troponin levels (Troponin is an enzyme that is present in heart muscles and if/when heart muscle is injured, the enzyme is released in blood and can be detected with a lab test) and EKG. The results showed that my father had a myocardial infarction or a heart attack. He was initially stabilized and the plan was for us to take him to Lahore to get an angiography. That day, Pakistan was playing Australia, in Sydney**. The night before my father’s health crisis, Pakistan was in a decent position against a decent Australian side. By the time we came back from the hospital and turned on the TV, Pakistan’s wicketkeeper had dropped a few important catches, turning the tide for Australia. Australia won that game eventually. I had had enough. I said goodbye to Cricket there and then.
I never played or watched cricket afterwards. I would keep occasional tabs when the Ashes series was being played (and Australia were losing). I read Osman Samiuddin’s excellent book on Pakistan Cricket, ‘The Unquiet ones’ and when I encountered him at a Literature Festival in Lahore, I asked for an autograph. I told him the story of how I soured on Cricket. He wrote “I hope this book brings you back to cricket” for me. My move away from Cricket came at the time when I was moving away from a traditional Pakistani Identity that I had grown up with. I was no longer antagonistic towards India, I was not proud of being a Pakistani. I was questioning everything I had believed in. To me, Cricket represented a very Pakistani pursuit and I was not willing to participate in it any longer.
** The Sydney test is legendary for Pakistan’s fuck-up and most cricket fans in Pakistan remember it, a fact that surprised some of my American friends.