A life with cricket

Cricket became a commitment but also a guided tour of the country, a way of getting on the inside. I wasn’t a foreigner entirely, or particularly rootless. I was very familiar with Pakistan, but not fully a part of it, like a friend perhaps, at a family function. What folk are like, how the country runs, how things get done; the interaction between those who run and who do the running; power structures; how the young and old deal with each other, the wheels on which bureaucracy moves; ethnic, sectarian faultlines; urban and rural ones too; broader ones between conservatism and liberalism; class divides, corruption, patronage, nepotism and the personal connection.