A stadium called Gaddafi
As protests in Libya intensify, responded by a brutal crackdown from the state, Murtaza Rizvi writes of how Pakistan's most well-known cricket stadium got its name
Siddhartha Talya
25-Feb-2013
As protests in Libya intensify, responded by a brutal crackdown from the state, Murtaza Rizvi writes of how Pakistan's most well-known cricket stadium got its name. Read his article in the Indian Express.
It was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, as the prime minister, who embarked on the policy of looking west to the Arab world for bonding and the obvious financial benefits that would accrue to Pakistan by being a player in the petrodollar economy of the Arab states, even if they were run by despotic autocrats. In 1974, Bhutto hosted the heads of Muslim states in Lahore for the Organisation of Islamic Conference summit, which included such adversaries as the reigning sheikhs of the oil-rich Gulf and Arab revolutionaries like Gaddafi and Yasser Arafat. The occasion was chosen to elicit support for Pakistan’s nuclear programme, as India was all set to go nuclear, and Gaddafi fitted the bill. In a grand ceremony at the Lahore Stadium, Bhutto announced the renaming of the cricket ground after the man whom he came to call one of his best friends.
Siddhartha Talya is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo