The inaugural edition of the Pakistan Super League (PSL) has concluded with Islamabad United beating Quetta Gladiators in a highly anticipated and heavily attended final match at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium. For many years, the idea of a Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) owned Twenty20 cricket franchise league seemed to be a pipedream, with the project suffering from multiple false starts and logistical hurdles, chief of which was the vexing fact that holding a tournament on Pakistani soil was nigh on impossible. However, after years of arrested development, finally in September 2015, the PSL was officially announced and five teams were up for offering. By November, the rights to teams had been sold for a collective $ 93 million for a period of 10 years; the five teams were named after the four provincial capitals as well as Islamabad. The number of teams was set to increase by one every year until a total of 10 teams would make up a fully fledged league. However, problems still remained, as there was no set venue until a late deal was reached to host PSL in the UAE. As a consequence, cynicism about the viability of such a tournament was high right up to the first match of PSL, and many naysayers predicted the tournament would be a sparsely attended bust.
Over the last three weeks, however, these doubts have been shown to be highly misguided as PSL has been hailed as an unqualified success. From the get go, the organisers of the tournament sought to make PSL a qualitatively different league that was designed to ensure an even playing field for the teams through its novel draft system of team selection as well as ensuring an environment where domestic Pakistani players would get superior coaching and flourish with exposure to international players. In the final analysis, it has to be concluded that with the quality of cricket and sporting drama on show — the final pitting the team representing the federal capital with Balochistan’s capital, for example — the pre-tournament efforts paid dividends. Commercially, the tournament was also a hit, with record television viewing figures as well as a steady increase in match attendances as the tournament progressed and captured interest. There is no doubt that PSL is an important feather in the cap of the PCB, and will have a positive impact on the development of Pakistani players and make the team more competitive. That it provided the people of the country some much needed entertainment and escapism is also commendable. Nonetheless, expectations must be managed and a reality check is in order: confident assertions that PSL will bring cricket back to Pakistan are an unfair burden on a fledgling league. The problems that led to Pakistan becoming a no-go zone for international cricketers are not in the control of the PCB and the quality of PSL has no impact on reducing the threat that keeps cricket away from home shores. *