Is there light in Pakistan's future?
The Quaid-e-Azam trophy final is being played under floodlights in Karachi. What does this step mean for Pakistan cricket?
Osman Samiuddin
16-Jan-2011

Danish Kaneria took four first-innings wickets with an orange ball • AFP
The future has apparently taken place at Karachi's National Stadium, a venue
as suited to that purpose as a museum. The Quaid-e-Azam trophy final, the
match for the premier first-class prize in the land's cricket, was on. The
tournament has been around since 1953-54, the most prestigious, yet it has
no identity or permanence to it, no real shape or structure. There have been
golden phases and irrelevant ones too.
One season it has organisations, one season regions, one season both, one
season two divisions, one season one. This year it has decided to have two
divisions, and complicated rules of relegation and promotion. The final is
being played under lights, with an orange ball, from 2pm local time onwards.
What a thing.
Of course it wasn't planned or anything. When the season began it wasn't on
the cards, and it could've been tried in the group stages. "It could've been
but I guess dair aaye durust aaye (better late than never)," says
Subhan Ahmed, the board's chief operating officer. "At least we are taking
this step and a lot will depend on how successful this is for us to carry
this forward for other matches."
Decidedly it is a left-field development this: modern and, for the PCB,
suspiciously so. Is it just a little bit like finding out your father is
listening to the same new band that you're listening to? It's been a long
time since the PCB was innovative. Bringing in organisations in the early
70s was one time, presaging the private ownership of cricket (in an entirely
different way to today of course). The tenure of Nur Khan, where the push
for neutral umpires began, in the 80s was one more; early backing of
technology for umpires yet another.
This latest idea emerged in a meeting between the board and broadcaster.
Talk, as it often is when such heavies meet, had been of attracting bigger
crowds to the first-class game, the type of crowds, for example, that turn
up regularly for the local Twenty20. A day-night final was mentioned, taken
up, discussed with the board's domestic tournaments committee, approved, and
here we are.
"The primary reason was that we knew there was a decrease in interest in our
public coming to first-class games," says Ahmed. "We thought that this could
provide something, inject something. There were commercial reasons as well.
Broadcasters would like to have a product for prime time."
Ahmed, if ever there was such a thing, is an indigenous PCB product, and
that is a good thing. If there is a job in the board he hasn't done
since the mid-90s, it's because it mustn't exist, and this is a gradual,
deserved progression. That he is immensely respected, trusted and liked by
the ICC, a man they can and do work with, is doubly important currently.
The trial isn't a pioneering one per se. Australia, never behind the game,
tried it in 1997 in the Sheffield Shield, using similar orange balls. The
same season, in April 1997, the final of India's Ranji Trophy, between
Mumbai and Delhi, was also floodlit, though white balls were used and they
had trouble with them, replacing them regularly. The West Indian 2009-10
domestic season also used pink balls and floodlights. The same smattering of
colour and imagination was also found in the English County Championship
opener in Abu Dhabi last March. Yet this is a significant moment, the game
being a final and on TV.
Momentum is gathering globally and critical mass nears. Day-night Tests
could be on the way. The ICC had been sounded out about the experiment, so
Dave Richardson, the ICC's GM cricket operations is here. "We're extremely
grateful to the PCB for holding this trial because it is very rare for a
domestic first-class match to be televised and for us to have a complete
trial it is necessary to see how the ball performs on the field, how the
players see it, how the spectators see it and how it appears on TV - whether
it creates a comet effect or it can be clearly seen on a TV screen."
Given how things have been between the ICC and the PCB, an extra layer of
politic is not difficult to imagine in the whole exercise. A report will be
sent soon after taking inputs from players, umpires, fans, and probably most
importantly, cameramen and TV viewers.
And what of the game itself? There was some zip around through the first
day, the ball gathering itself in flight before pinging itself this way and
that, skidding almost, off the surface. Was it the orange ball, or lights
later? Or was it just the National Stadium up to her old ways, always giving
to those bowlers on the first day who pitch full? No batsman looked entirely
uncomfortable, but neither did any really book in, Kamran Sajid apart.
Shoaib Malik was Sania-less and out of the national side, and played with a
suitably commanding fury. It was brief.
Two days before the final, both sides practised with an orange and pink
ball. The orange, used in the local Twenty20 a few years back, won. Javed
Miandad, who was around, thinks colour is no issue. He would, wouldn't he?
Laptops make no difference to him. Hanif Mohammad thought it swung a little
more. Danish Kaneria picked up four on the first day and got good break. On
the second, Imran Farhat got a racy hundred, so the orange ball can't have
been that bad; he said it kept its shine and hardness longer. Later in the
innings there was some reverse as well.
The ball lasted. The cricket was gripping throughout, good deliveries
beating edges, fine drives through cover and square, matters even
essentially.
Umpires might have been troubled. Farhat's leg-before in particular was
awful and Hasan Raza didn't look best pleased about his.
There wasn't so much a crowd as random gatherings of people through the
stands; thin gatherings. Had the board decided to properly promote the
final, maybe more would've come. Maybe they should've advertised it as eight
hours of uninterrupted light and electricity on offer in a city - like the
country - in the grip of an overwhelming power crisis. Had it been staged in
Faisalabad or another smaller metro, more would definitely have come;
considerably more. And starting another domestic competition, the one-day
cup, before this final had finished wasn't too bright either.
These are quibbles, little trudges backwards from one minor step, forward,
sideways, diagonally, wherever, but generally in a direction away from the
current hole. If things go well here, more floodlit games could be held.
"It is a step forward and we hope to experiment more in the near future,"
says Ahmed. Is there light?
Osman Samiuddin is Pakistan editor of ESPNcricinfo