Playing it unsafe

With no international cricket to be played in Pakistan in the forseeable future following on from the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers in Lahore, the Gulf would be the closest thing the team would soon have to a ‘home ground’. Kamila Shamsie, writing in the Indian Express, feels a great sadness as she recalls the particular history of her hometown, Karachi, and international cricket.

I found myself thinking of the status update on a friend’s Facebook page which declared she was “already missing the sound of plastic bottles hitting stadium chairs.” There are, of course, plastic bottles in Dubai, and Pakistanis enough there who will know that the true sound of cricket spectatorship, particularly during the ODIs, is not cheering or applauding but the thwacking of those empty bottles against the backs of chairs. But even so, there is a sadness to outsourcing that noise, that jubilation.