Despite three Champions Trophy matches in the country getting abandoned due to rain, fans losing interest after the national team’s premature exit, excessive spending on revamping stadiums, a hybrid model and suffocating security measures, experts in Pakistan still believe the marquee event was a success and could open the doors for more international events. Pakistan hosted the Champions Trophy on a hybrid model after India refused to send its team to the country due to security concerns, and instead played all its matches in Dubai.
While fans in Pakistan could not watch the arch-foes clash in one of the three refurbished venues in the country, they suffered a huge setback when Mohammad Rizwan’s side was eliminated early after losing to New Zealand and India.
On the security front, though, Pakistan earned a lot of points with the event in the country not seeing a single untoward incident.
“It is what it is for Pakistan cricket. Given that we even had another terror incident in Bannu a day before the semifinal (between South Africa and New Zealand) in Lahore, we should be happy that we managed to host such a big event without any incident,” said cricket analyst and writer, Omair Alavi.
Pakistan deployed around 16,000 police and paramilitary rangers for the safety of the visiting teams in Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi. Though Australia skipper Steve Smith, South Africa’s Temba Bavuma and New Zealand’s Mitchell Santner spoke about how relaxed they felt moving around in Dubai compared to the stringent security protection they had in Pakistan, Dave Musker, ICC’s safety and security manager, said the event was “successful”.
“The coordination and professionalism of the security personnel was very good and I would say it was a successful event,” Musker said in Lahore.
Another security analyst Sohail Khan that given that the country’s security arrangements were in focus, there was no room for any slipup.
“I would say that Pakistan did well to host the event without a single incident. All eyes were on our security personnel in the tournament and they delivered,” said Khan, who has worked extensively on security issues in the past and went to India to clear Pakistan’s tour in 2005.
In 2009, the Sri Lankan cricket team had come under attack from terrorists in Lahore, thus isolating Pakistan cricket for nearly nine years.
Senior Superintendent of Police, Imran Jamil, who was deployed in Karachi to oversee the security arrangements in the Champions Trophy, said they tried to fulfil the requests of teams and players and give them a more relaxed environment.
“But we had a job to do and we had to take that into consideration as well,” he said.
While on the security front, the event was a success, the Pakistan Cricket Board too sees several positives despite its team bowing out early.
“It was a bummer that our team didn’t do well and that understandably hit the interest level in later matches. But otherwise things went smoothly,” a PCB official said on condition of anonymity.
“Our main focus was not on making money but to deliver a world-class event and we did that,” he claimed.
The PCB’s finances, though, would have taken a hit as three matches were abandoned, two without a ball being bowled in Rawalpindi.
The PCB is guaranteed a USD 600,000 hosting fees apart from a share in ticket revenue, sale of hospitality boxes and some sponsorship on the grounds. But with two washouts, the board will have to refund the ticket money, meaning a hit to their earnings.
Alavi felt that it is unlikely the PCB will recover the billions of rupees it spent on upgrading the stadiums from hosting rights fees and other shares.
“As far as Pakistan’s share from the ICC revenues is concerned, that is guaranteed even if we had not hosted the event,” he noted. The PCB’s annual share from ICC event revenues is around USD 32 million in the current financial model for all member boards.
But with the Pakistan team performing poorly, some former players are questioning if the expenditure of 1.8 billion Pak rupees was needed to revamp the stadiums.
“There was more focus on the stadiums than on cricket itself,” former Test pacer Sikander Bakht said.
“Our stadiums were fine, they just needed a makeover. The same money could have been spent on building a new stadium in Islamabad or upgrading smaller venues like Faisalabad, Peshawar, Hyderabad, Sialkot etc,” he added.
Former Test player, Iqbal Qasim felt Pakistan probably wanted to showcase its cricket facilities to the world because of which it spent crores on the upgrades.
“Maybe we wanted to showcase to the world that Pakistan has world-class facilities to host international events, but the arrangements to deal with bad weather at the Gaddafi Stadium during the Australia-Afghanistan match didn’t send out the right message,” he said.
The match was called off because of rain after Afghanistan scored 273 runs in 50 overs batting first. Australia could only bat for 12.5 overs, scoring 109/1.
Arif Ali Khan Abbasi, a former strong man in Pakistan cricket, believes the Champions Trophy will benefit the PCB as it will get to host more international events, but how far it will fill the board’s coffers remains to be seen as India is not ready to play in the country.
“I think until we can’t convince the Indian team to play in Pakistan in even ICC or Asian-level events and end this hybrid scheduling, we will really not gain financially… which means (not) having funds to improve our domestic infrastructure,” he said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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