Daily Times

KARACHI: Thousands of security personnel will be deployed when Karachi hosts the final of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) on Sunday (tomorrow) – its biggest cricket match in nine years, after a spate of attacks drove away foreign teams. Although some overseas players opted out, authorities have promised head-of-state level security at the National Cricket Stadium when Peshawar Zalmi take on Islamabad United. The Twenty20 match has great significance for Pakistan as it gradually welcomes back international cricket, which ground to a halt after a deadly attack on Sri Lanka’s Test team in Lahore in 2009 which killed eight people and injured seven visiting players.

As well as the final in Karachi, both eliminators were held in Lahore this week – a step forward from last year, when only the final was held on Pakistani soil at Gaddafi Stadium. Karachi will also host three T20 internationals between Pakistan and the West Indies in early April, the first home series involving a Test-level team since 2009.

Next year, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has said it hopes to hold half of the PSL on home turf. Currently, most of the games are played in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Despite the encouraging signs, some of the PSL’s top stars preferred not to play in Pakistan, including Quetta Gladiators batsman Kevin Pietersen who appeared to announce his retirement instead. Australia all-rounder Shane Watson also opted out for Quetta, who were knocked out by Peshawar.

Quetta head coach Moin Khan said players who promise to play in Pakistan but later back out should be barred from the PSL draft. England’s limited-overs captain Eoin Morgan was another to skip Pakistan, while England’s Alex Hales and Sam Billings will both be missing for Islamabad United when they take on Zalmi on Sunday.

Pakistan has pulled out all the stops for the PSL, to the extent of using helicopters to dry the rain-sodden Lahore pitch for Wednesday’s semi-final. The last time a helicopter was seen hovering so close to Gaddafi Stadium was in 2009, when one was used to airlift the survivors of the Sri Lankan team attack to safety. But foreign experts who examined the security arrangements said they were “as good as any” they have seen. Pakistan has since played nearly all its home matches in the UAE, where earlier rounds of the PSL were also staged. But authorities have been working hard to ease international cricket back to Pakistan, with the final of last year’s PSL in Lahore seen as a major turning point.

Published in Daily Times, March 24^th 2018.