History of Domestic Cricket in Pakistan – Part One
Since the emergence of limited overs cricket in the 1970s, cricket has become one of the popular sports in the world and especially in the sub-continent. The viewership of cricket at the international level is increasing with every passing season. Cricket
has surely become one of the major tools of marketing and advertising.
The people of Pakistan have immense interest in the game of cricket and the sport has become one of the very few reasons, which can bring smile on their faces. Pakistan’s poor performances in recent past in some of the other sports like Hockey and Squash
have decreased the level of interest of the general masses in these games but they still follow cricket and almost the whole nations is glued to their television sets, whenever Pakistan cricket team is in action. In the present political scenario of the country,
when there is talk of ethnicity and sectarianism in Baluchistan, Sind, http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Punjab-c833 and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, cricket is surely one thing which can unite the whole nation under one flag.
However, in order to be competitive at the international stage, a country must have a very strong structure of domestic cricket but it is quite sad that the officials in Pakistan do not give importance to domestic cricket, yet they expect the national team
to deliver the goods on consistent basis.
For a country to have a solid structure of domestic cricket, the cricket board must persist with one structure. However, it is disappointing that different cricket boards in Pakistan have experimented with the structure of cricket at the grass-root level
and they never allowed any system to flourish.
Let us have a look at the history of domestic cricket in Pakistan and how the game evolved at the national level.
History of domestic cricket in Pakistan is as old as the independence itself. Cricket became popular in India under the British rule and a structure of cricket was there in Pakistan and http://www.senore.com/Cricket/India-c750 at the time of separation. Karachi and Lahore were considered
as the nurseries of cricket in early times and also for many years to come before the sport got popularity in different urban and rural areas of the country. Some of the major tournaments of the domestic cricket of Pakistan are as follows:
Quaid e Azam Trophy
Till 1953, there was only club cricket played in the country. In order to select the team for Pakistan team’s tour of http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Mohammad-Ali-c76635 Jinnah.
Since then, Quaid e Azam Trophy has been organized every year and it has become the most important and premier domestic cricket tournament in Pakistan. Quaid e Azam Trophy consists of first-class matches, which is considered as the second grade cricket all
around the world behind Test cricket and One Day Internationals. It is also called four-day cricket because the time span for every match is a minimum of four days.
Till 1969-70, only regional teams used to take part in Quaid e Azam Trophy but then departmental teams were also allowed to play in the most prestigious tournament of the domestic cricket of Pakistan. Since last ten years, PCB has consistently made changes
in the tournament as sometimes it is limited to regions only and in other seasons, both departmental and regional teams have competed against each other.
To be continued …
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