Winning hearts, changing minds: The inside story of the PSL's homecoming

SPECIAL REPORT - SAM MORSHEAD IN PAKISTAN: From the construction company employees manning an abandoned clocktower in Multan, to teachers at a girls’ school in rural South Punjab, the message is the same: Pakistan is not what you think it is

Babar Hamid looks tired. And no wonder.

The man in charge of delivering Pakistan’s most important cultural and sporting event of the 21st century crouches forward intently in his seat, making sure not to break eye contact.

We have found a quiet corner of the raucous Multan International Cricket Stadium, with only the heavy rotations of a ceiling fan to interrupt us. 

Outside, 30,000 locals are about to experience their city’s first taste of elite cricket for 12 years. The stadium wobbles with expectation. Hamid thinks about that for a moment, and smiles.

“When you see somebody dancing to the tune of their home team, your heart triples in size,” he says. 

“This is what I’ve worked for, this is what my country needs and this is who we are - peaceful, fun-loving, hospitable Pakistan.”

Hamid, the commercial director of the PCB and the chair of the PSL organising committee, wears on his lapel a distinctive badge - a green hand; index and middle finger outstretched to form a capital V.

V is for ‘five’, this is the fifth edition of the Pakistan Super League. 

More importantly, though, V is for ‘victory for Pakistan’.

“PSL is a source of national pride,” he says. “It is a league that was created five years ago and the idea was to bring it back to Pakistan. We all feel very passionate about it. It’s actually a dream that has come true - 220million Pakistanis have been waiting for this to happen, for cricket to come home in its full scale.”

It doesn’t take long to realise, however, that the PSL is about so much more than cricket.

Pakistanis are desperate to show there is no good reason to avoid their country - and this is made clear from the moment The Cricketer lands in Lahore.

There, I am greeted by an airport fixer named Gilani - a bearded barrel of a man who somehow meets me on the international side of passport control and crosses into Pakistan without so much as a whisper.

^{Our reporter Sam Morshead is greeted by Multan Sultans mascot Saeen}

“Are you a player?” he asks, not even giving me pause to blush with embarrassment before he changes the subject. “You know Pakistan is safe. You hear these f*****g stories, and how they talk about us. It is not true. It’s not who we are.”

Gilani’s words are repeated by just about every local The Cricketer comes across during eight days in the country.

From the construction company employees manning an abandoned clocktower in Multan, to the fans who flock around my interview with a TV local network, to teachers at a girls’ school in rural South Punjab, the message is the same: Pakistan is not what you think it is.

“This is a good country,” one security guard, formerly a special forces operative, says. “We have (had) problems, but not now.”

Those who have served in the military over the course of the 21st century, and up to 2011 in particular, saw the worst of Pakistan as it struggled against the plague of terrorism.

Attempts on the lives of senior political figures were commonplace - former president Pervez Musharraf was the target on four occasions, including Christmas Day 2003 when his car escaped with blood on its bonnet in Rawalpindi as 14 others died; two-time prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated at a rally in the same city in 2007; three years earlier, then prime minister designate Shaukat Aziz had survived a suicide bomb attack on his motorcade in the town of Fateh Jang, 50 kilometres outside Islamabad.

And these were only a handful of the tremors in the continuous social earthquake which shook Pakistan for much of that decade.

According to a 2018 study by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, more than 23,000 Pakistani citizens and in excess of 8,000 members of the country’s security forces were killed as a direct result of the ‘War on Terror’. In 2009 alone - the year in which cricket became tragically intertwined with the narrative when the Sri Lankan team bus was ambushed by gunmen in Lahore - 3,349 lives were lost to terrorism in Pakistan.

Economically, the country sustained substantial damages, too, with estimated losses of $68billion associated with terrorism being made in the first 10 years of the millenium. The government’s 2018 Economic Survey put total losses to the economy which were attributable to the Afghan war, the fight against the Taliban and general terrorism-related operations since 2001 at an astonishing $126.79billion, more than a third of the current GDP of a country with a population some 220million strong.

Pakistan’s cricketers were forced out of their own cities as a result, and to the UAE - where the price of staging matches spiralled, and revenue streams dried up. What’s more, according to then PCB chief executive Najam Sethi in a 2018 interview with the Daily Telegraph, the cost of terrorism to Pakistani cricket totalled more than $200milllion. 

But the impact is deeper than dollars and rupees. Sociologically and culturally, Pakistan has suffered just as much.

Former cricketing hotbeds have seen interest drop, much of the country has never had the chance to see their heroes play in the flesh, and Pakistan’s status in the world has been left scarred.

This is why this PSL is so important; not just to the PCB, not just to the economy, but to Pakistani society as a whole.

It represents an opportunity for the country to heal, grow, and open itself up to an international audience once more.

In Multan, the disconnect of the past two decades is much more obvious than in cosmopolitan Lahore. Walking the streets as a white man - or “gora”, to employ the Urdu epithet - eyes fall on you quickly, and stick to your back. Around the stadium, strangers flock for selfies, only to then ask for your name. You are very much the circus attraction, an uncommon sight in the flesh.

This is where the PSL is doing more than just bringing cricket back to the people of Pakistan. 

“We need people of international exposure and knowledge systems to be coming in here because that’s how we will become more dynamic,” actor and documentary maker Adnan Malik tells The Cricketer. 

Multan. Like no other place I've watched cricket.#PSL2020 pic.twitter.com/QNb8o9YEBs

— Sam Morshead (@SamMorshead_) February 29, 2020

“Borders are so porous now in the knowledge industry. For some reason, we have been ostracised and because of that, we haven’t grown in the way that we should. Cricket is symbolic of a real socio-economic shift.”

The PCB, often derided for its poor decision-making, has recognised the significance of this year’s tournament, not only for the people of Pakistan but for the nation’s international image too.

“Cricket is such a big part of our identity as a nation,” says Malik. 

“Having the PSL coming in and having foreigners coming in to play, it affects the culture of the place. There’s a sense of multiculturalism and the positive effects that brings. You see people from different backgrounds, different races.

“You hear different stories, you have different experiences. It’s about putting us back on the map. I’m in the culture industry and we want to get our voices out there because culture is soft power. You want people to know your stories and that is how you become valued internationally. You want a positive story in the Guardian or the New York Times about something good happening.” 

Pakistan, to this westerner, seems to exist in a permanent state of organised chaos. Decisions appear to be made primarily on a whim, and the best laid plans are often pulled apart and pieced back together in a totally different order at a moment’s notice.

Much like the traffic on the streets of Multan - where horses pulling carts of crops hold up squadrons of motorcycles, and pedestrians weave their way between vehicles with nimble fearlessness - there appears to be little direction. Yet everyone gets to where they need to be.

The PSL cannot operate like that. It could not survive in a state of frenzy. The challenges of running a major global sports event in a country whose infrastructure is only just up to the task - rolling blackouts filter across the city during a rainstorm, while much of the tarmac is crumbling - are substantial enough without the organisers playing hit-and-hope with their own competition.

There are 70 PCB employees tasked with the overall delivery of the PSL - the same number as took charge of the event when it was hosted in its majority in Dubai and Sharjah.

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Between them, they face the unenviable task of coordinating ticket sales, marketing, venue arrangements, security, player welfare, the media operation, travel and logistics, and contingency planning.

They must liaise with the governments of Punjab and Sindh, the military, and local police forces over the constant head-of-state protocols required for all six teams and their backroom staff.

They must move a production crew some 150 members strong around the four host cities, and ensure there are 400 hotel rooms of adequate quality and hygiene available throughout the month the PSL is on location in Pakistan.

“This kind of logistical and operational magnitude has never happened in Pakistan in the last 70 years. Everything that we’re doing now is a first,” Hamid says.

“Until now, in Dubai, there was one venue. Here there are four. That means two different kits for production, for spider cam, for ground perimeter boards, two different teams from within our own team,” he says.

“This is now a test of how much stretch this team can take. So far, by the grace of god, it has been a fantastic tournament. The stadiums are jampacked.”

For the players, life at the PSL can be dull. Depending on the city in which they are playing, it can be interminably so. 

In Lahore, the Pearl-Continental Hotel’s spa, sports bar, seven dining options and in-situ shopping mall provide enough entertainment to stave off the onset of cabin fever.

In Multan, however, distractions are sparse. The teams are packed into the modest Ramada near the city’s airport. It is functional and clean but offers little by way of entertainment for guests who are penned inside at all times, other than practice and matches.

There is a table tennis table, a volleyball net, a small swimming pool and a gym. There is one buffet restaurant.

^{The sight from the back of the stands at the Multan International Cricket Stadium}

“All I’ve had is pizza and chips,” an overseas player says. He is shocked to hear The Cricketer stopped for roadside juice on a trip to see the Shah-Rukn-e-Alam shrine in the city the previous day. 

“You just have to be safe”.

This is an image issue, of course. The hotel provides an array of options, from fish and chips to grilled chicken to more traditional Pakistani dishes, salads and sweets, but athletes abroad are understandably conscious about what they are putting in their bodies. The teams do not have dedicated chefs.

Upstairs, the Multan Sultans owners have tried to compensate for the degree of boredom felt by their foreign recruits. A pool table has been specially constructed in one of the first-floor suites -  a process which took a local carpenter seven hours, given the unit could not be moved up to the first floor intact - while FIFA 20 is set up on a widescreen TV. There is also a sizable balcony, onto which a steady stream of concierges and bell boys shuttle patio furniture throughout the team’s first afternoon in the city. 

Peshawar Zalmi’s overseas contingent are invited to spend an evening inside.

“This is really good,” one player from the franchise tells The Cricketer. “We’ve mainly been stuck in our rooms without anything to do.”

Moeen Ali, the England allrounder, is part of the Sultans’ squad.

“Sitting in this room does help,” he says. “You’ve got FIFA on, you’ve got a pool table, you’ve got table tennis. I’ve been on international tours where you don’t have that and you’re stuck in your hotel room.

“There are days that you go out, but honestly when you’re on tour you don’t go out that much.

“I’m not a beach kind of guy. Even when I’m in Australia, I go out here and there but it’s the same as there. The PCB will look at it and they will have events for the players to go out and enjoy. We’ve had that here; we had a lunch when we got to Multan. Looking forward, I’m sure there will be others.”

That, of course, will depend on security being downgraded in the future. 

For this PSL, the arrangements are as intense as they could possibly be: head-of-state protection costing hundreds of millions of rupees - an estimation based on multiple conversations with senior sources, with the actual sum bound up tightly by red tape. 

Armed guards patrol the hotels, the stadium is ringed with military police bearing semi-automatic weapons, snipers sit on overhanging rooftops; team management are obliged to give authorities 48 hours’ notice if they so much as want to play hopscotch in a nearby park, and the players are escorted around the host cities on closed roads in blockbuster motorcades some 40 vehicles long.

At times, the heavy-duty entourage feels a little neurotic.

As close to danger as we come in Multan is a near miss involving an army four-by-four and an overwhelmed local who ran into the road to throw petals over the passing convoy. 

But Pakistan knows it only has one chance at this. As one well-placed source within the PCB says: “if anything was to happen it would set us back another 10 years”.

“We always want to soften the security because players want to get out and do things, but if you’re under state security protection there are certain protocols to adhere to,” PCB chief executive Wasim Khan tells The Cricketer.

“What we’ve seen is the strength of the partnership between the army, the police, the PCB and the government.”

That partnership in action is extraordinary to see. Some might think security measures for sporting events in the UK are tiresome. Compared to the Pakistani approach, they are no more exhaustive than bolstering your password with an uppercase vowell.

The entrances to the Multan International Cricket Stadium are watched over by soldiers in black bulletproof vests and balaclavas; bags are sent through airport-style scanners, humans marched through metal detecting arches; every gate is manned by a uniformed guard. 

The streets of Multan stop for its PSL stars

An extraordinary experience, being part of a head-of-state style motorcade, heading for @MultanSultans vs @KarachiKingsARY #PSL2020 pic.twitter.com/Pca5u4RiLL

— Sam Morshead (@SamMorshead_) February 28, 2020

At the end of each match, the two teams are hastily bundled into minibuses, flanked by motorcycle outriders and a dozen armed escorts, followed by ambulances and fire trucks. As night falls, all the way from stadium to hotel the suburbs are flooded in artificial light produced by chugging temporary generators which line the central reservation. 

Caution. Caution. Caution. The pictures of the horrendous assault on the Sri Lankan team in Lahore just over a decade ago still burnt into the country’s consciousness. 

“Pakistan has gone through a rough patch for 10 years when there was no cricket here because of a very sad incident that happened,” Hamid says.

“The reason why we have kept it so airtight is because we need to be prepared for any eventuality. It is all precaution-based.

“As we do it next year and the year after, things are going to get much, much more relaxed. This time around it’s the first time, everybody’s cautious, everybody’s careful, everybody wants to deliver the best possible tournament that we can. Hence it’s airtight.

“As time goes by, as you people also feel comfortable coming back, as the foreign players and production crew come back, things will get more relaxed because you will feel that it is a normal country, nothing happens, you’re good to go.”

Consensus among the players is that the security provisions make them feel safe and, quite frankly, that is the entire point. 

Moeen has flown most of his family over for the tournament, while Clare Connor - the ECB women’s lead and partner of Multan head coach Andy Flower - stops by for four days on her way over to Australia for the Women’s T20 World Cup.

“Some guys probably think ‘that guy with a gun could turn on you’ but you can’t be too negative about these things,” Moeen says. “Personally, I feel safer. I’ve brought my kids out, I’ve brought my missus out, I’ve brought my mum, my dad’s coming. 

“It’s been so long that there hasn’t been international cricket here. People are just very cautious, I think it’s now just human nature to be a bit like that. Personally, I think it’s quite harsh at times.

“I understand it; people’s safety comes first and something might happen, we don’t know. But that might happen anywhere.”

One of Flower’s first overseas tours as a Test cricketer was to Pakistan, well before the plague of terrorism took hold, when teams moved freely about the country.

He played in Quetta, to which the Foreign Office currently advises against all travel. With his Zimbabwe teammates, he climbed the Khyber Pass, now largely off-limits to all but Pakistani nationals, and had lunch with the governor looking out over Afghanistan.

He played in Peshawar, Sheikhupura and Sahiwal, where elite cricket has not been seen for most of a generation.

“My connection to Pakistan cricket feels quite personal to me,” he says.

^{Juice is served by the roadside in Multan}

“Those early experiences for me were fascinating, a completely different culture. We played against the greats, in Wasim and Waqar and Mushy and Javed Miandad. They were very powerful experiences for me as a cricketer and a person.

“I feel like I have strong connections with them. To play a part in helping to initiate cricket back in Pakistan, through bringing that international XI here, an initiative begun by Giles Clarke, was fantastic.

“This PSL is another very important step. 

“It’s wonderful to be welcomed so warmly, it’s a genuinely warm welcome from the people of Pakistan and the cricketing community.

“Justifiably, the security measures here are of a very high standard, quite strict and we are restricted, but the warmth of the welcome has, to a large extent, compensated for that.”

There is less and less of a case, however, for the sport staying away from Pakistan. 

Last year the British government softened its advice to nationals with regards to travel to the region, and other cricket-playing nations have suffered their own atrocities in the interim.

“Sadly, there is evidence of similar dangers in previously very safe parts of the world - who would have thought there would be terrorist attacks in New Zealand, for goodness sake,” says Flower. “And we know what’s happened in Europe over the last few years.

“Increasingly, Pakistan could argue that they are being unfairly treated but I think they’re taking a very mature and reasonable stance at the moment, providing evidence that it’s okay to play international cricket here.”

Moeen agrees.

“I think it’s a little bit unfair because you’re not safe anywhere. 

“It can be wrong place, wrong time. Even in England now, the crime rate’s massive. I just feel the perception you have from the outside is it’s not safe to go. My counter-argument is it’s not safe anywhere, really.”

As part of their commitment to showcasing the good in Pakistani society, PSL organisers are giving tremendous airtime to the celebration of individuals who have made significant contributions to the country as part of an initiative known as Hamari Heroes.

Young people and families are encouraged to attend matches, with price reductions on some tickets. Although in the rural city of Multan the crowd is predominantly male - partly due to its location in the suburbs, partly due to the more traditional gender roles in play in the region - in Lahore and Karachi, plenty of women come to games.

There is an economic boost to the country, too. 

The streets are plastered in adverts bearing the faces of cricketing idols, with every product from laundry liquid to ghee carrying some sort of PSL endorsement. Some are official, others are testing the elasticity of copyright law. One cheeky local billboard manufacturer tries to maximise the exposure the competition is generating by sticking his face alongside Multan owner Ali Tareen’s on a 40-foot placard two kilometres from the stadium. A similarly audacious bus operator mistakes Tareen’s likeness for his father Jahangir and flaps the wrong face on the side of one of his vehicles. 

Advert breaks on TV are a relentless flurry of Pakistani cricketing royalty - Shoaib Malik flogs Sprite, Babar Azam a family savings account (the absence of gambling and alcohol ads is hugely refreshing for a viewer sick of the UK’s commercial diet)  - and why not? The PSL is big business.

“It is probably the biggest brand in the country today,” Hamid says.

“When it comes to an event like this, the hotels get fully booked, the car rental companies get fully booked, when people come in it’s a festive month, people go out to eat more and restaurants have large screens put up for people to come and watch the match if they can’t go to the stadium,” Hamid says. “Whenever an event like this happens, it will give back immensely.

“A lot of people have travelled from Dubai, from England, from Saudi to come and see the matches, and they will spend more money. The cycle becomes bigger and bigger. The more and more the league develops, the more it will contribute to the economy.”

“You guys are going to go and talk about it, and that’s the image that we want. You can show 1,000 things on TV but this is real stuff, this is not fabricated”

“We’re lucky we’ve got a PM who’s an ex-player and who has made it absolutely clear how important it is for cricket to come back to the country,” Khan says.

“Talking about it is one thing but actually delivering it is another. To bring Test match cricket back and now the HBL PSL is a huge achievement and something we definitely want to build on. Having cricket here, the people have been starved of cricket for a long time. It gives our players better exposure, it gives an opportunity to international players so they can go back and use their word of mouth - which is as strong as anything - to say how safe Pakistan is and what an experience they’ve had.

“All of it goes towards creating an investment for a future for our game in this country.”

So what chance of England touring again in the near future? 

“The world is united in wanting to see cricket come back to Pakistan. In some circumstances there are baby steps that need to be taken, in others we can move a lot quicker - for example, we’ve had West Indies, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka coming over,” Khan says.

The PCB chief executive is in regular contact with his ECB equivalent, Tom Harrison, who last year made a visit to Pakistan alongside security expert Reg Dickason.

Dickason knows better than anyone the relative risks of a trip to the country - he has acted as a consultant to the PSL for several years, and his men are involved in the ongoing tournament as the teams’ security liaisons. 

Harrison, meanwhile, met the Pakistan High Commissioner in the final week of February, and discussions have begun over the possibility of a Lions or Under-19 tour in the coming months, given the senior team are not due to visit until 2022, according to the ICC Future Tours Programme. 

The ECB are still as yet unable to commit to that tour - five ODIs and three Tests - taking place in Pakistan, with a spokesperson saying in a statement to The Cricketer that “there is a lot of work to be done”.

“We welcome the fact that international cricket is beginning to return to Pakistan,” the statement read. 

“Recently, we made a preliminary fact-finding visit at the invitation of the Pakistan Cricket Board along with Cricket Australia and Cricket Ireland. Meetings have also been held with Pakistan’s High Commissioner.

“These meetings were important steps in assessing the viability of future tours to Pakistan. There is a lot of work to be done and conversations to be had but we harbour ambitions to tour Pakistan in the future.”

The ECB have yet to ask players who have been part of the PSL for their thoughts on the prospect of a tour, though The Cricketer understands there is a plan to canvass the English contingent at the end of this year’s tournament.

“If they ask and they want to know then of course I’ll be honest about it. I won’t be biased for or against it at all. I’ll tell them what I think and believe,” Moeen says.

“As a player you hope that cricket does come back here and you’re part of that legacy. You hope you’re part of that group that came back and played cricket in Pakistan again.”

The Cricketer asks Khan if he believes there is sufficient evidence for England, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand not to tour.

“There certainly wouldn’t be a reason for them not to now,” he says. “We’ve had the MCC come over, we’ve seen the PSL taking place, we’ve got 36 foreign players taking part in this, we’ve had Sri Lanka and Bangladesh play here. We’ve done a lot of work behind the scenes. Our security is second to none because we’ve had to do it, sadly for us. We’ve at least proven that it’s not just about being on paper, from a security perspective we can actually implement it.

“We’re looking forward to welcoming those teams in the near future and it’s really important for us as a country that some of those nations make the decision to come here as well.”

Do not be misled, Pakistan remains a work in progress. The underlying tensions in its relationship with India remain, and though the terrorist threat has been largely quelled it has not been banished entirely. 

Still, though, what the PSL, its players, fans and organisers have achieved in 2020 is so important. They have issued a reminder - through the medium of sport - that there is more to Pakistan than its recent past.

There is a poignant moment in my conversation with Hamid when the interviewee turns the tape on the interviewer.

“When you go back, you’re going to be an ambassador of Pakistan to your country, to your friends and to your colleagues,” he says.

“Similarly, when the players comes in they will see the hospitality, the crowd and how civil the people are when they sit and watch and enjoy their cricket. They will see how joyous these moments are for them. They will see how the people celebrate anything and everything which relates to cricket in Pakistan.

“You guys are going to go and talk about it, and that’s the image that we want. You can show 1,000 things on TV but this is real stuff, this is not fabricated.”