Multan's message to the world on seismic opening night

SAM MORSHEAD IN MULTAN: This is a tale of social change, national identity, ambition, politics, friendship, perception and misconception, passion and biryani

It’s coming up to a quarter past two in the morning in Multan and a dusty haze has settled over the city.

It’s quiet. 

This ought to be a match report - I told the team back in London that it would be a match report - but that just doesn’t seem adequate any more. Not after that. Not after tonight.

A list of dismissals and totals is not the story here. If you want all that, here’s a link to the scorecard. 

No, what happened at the Multan International Cricket Stadium this evening, while intrinsically linked to cricket, is about so much more. 

It is a tale of social change, national identity, ambition, politics, friendship, perception and misconception, passion and biryani. 

So forgive me if you came here to know who won (spoiler: it was Pakistan), but you’ll be better served elsewhere. 

^{Multan Sultans players celebrate a wicket}

***

The cheers were long and loud from fully two hours before the start of play; outside, the queue to get into the stadium wormed back along the main access road; inside, the bass thumped hard against the turf and arms waved frantically in the stands.

In England, we like to think we have the best fans in the world.

We travel in massive numbers, and we sing throughout sessions, and we fill stadia, and we inject our salaries into Planet Cricket’s various ecosystems. 

But none of those atmospheres compares to the thrill and shrill of this Multan crowd during the first over of their first elite match in a decade.

None of our songs echoes with the same depth of feeling as 25,000 voices screaming “Lala” upon what was quite probably their first sighting of Shahid Afridi in the flesh.

None of our salaries could afford what this tournament means to the people of Multan, and more widely the people of Pakistan.

This was not like any cricket experience I have ever had. Nor, I would hazard, will it be like anything I will experience again - and that’s accounting for the Sultans’ two remaining matches in South Punjab.

This felt seismic. This felt seminal. This felt truly historic.

Ultimately, the result didn’t matter. 

As it so happened, Multan were far too good for their Zalmi opponents, who imploded against incisive fast bowling from Sohail Tanveer and Mohammad Ilyas, and watched on helplessly as Rilee Rossouw and Khushdil Shah - a powerpacking hidden gem batting at six for the hosts - carried the chase.

But all that will soon become a faded footnote to this pivotal chapter in the rehabilitation of Pakistani cricket. 

Because here in Multan, beyond the international stars and the rookies making their way in Peshawar black and Sultans green and blue, there were thousands of locals - mostly young men - who had never seen anything like this in their lives. 

They were not here for Friday evening beers with office colleagues, nor were they stuck in corporate lunches until well into the second powerplay - in the hospitality section, such was the rush to squeeze in a meal between innings, the banqueting hall became a hopeless tangle of reckless queueing, upright dining and spilled biryani.  

They were here for one reason, and one reason alone. They absolutely adore cricket and, finally, it had arrived on their doorstep. 

Doorstep might not be the most suitable word. The Multan International Stadium’s suburban location, paired with the haphazard nature of preparations for the return of top-level cricket to the venue (until three days ago, the ground’s operations team consisted of just three employees), meant residents would have had to set aside several hours to make the trip; but make the trip they did. 

And they brought with them the sort of all-consuming obsession which in different circumstances might result in a restraining order.

^{Left, Shahid Afridi celebrates. Right, a sign thanking foreign players for coming to the PSL}

The roar which greeted the first wicket of the night, fittingly claimed by Multan’s only local player Mohammad Irfan - Tom Banton caught by Afridi at cover, wobbled the stadium enough to get a seismograph interested. 

Had The Cricketer not been there to witness it in all its cacophonous glory, we might have laid a libellous canned crowd noise allegation against the PCB.

In this instance, though, TV coverage gave an accurate account of what it was like to be pitchside - feverish, frenetic, at times utterly ferocious but, most of all, fun.

There were numerous homemade banners in the crowd, scribbled in felt-tip pen on leftover cardboard. Often these messages are concocted purely to get their creators on TV - “Danny Morrison, I have a cake for you”, “nice hair style, Danny Morrison” and so on - yet there was one sentiment which stood out over and over again: peace.

One was particularly eye-catching.

“This is not Sultan against Zalmi,” it read. “This is Pakistan against terrorism”.

The young man who purposefully held it above his head spoke about his frustrations at the perception of Pakistan as an outlaw state, lost in its own troubles and disconnected from the world. 

The country is still recovering its international image from problems of the past - from a cricket perspective, the pictures of the assault on the Sri Lankan team bus in 2009 resonate hard - yet there is increasingly less and less evidence to make the case for players, coaches, journalists and fans not to visit.

Obviously not all of Pakistan is as peaceful and stable as Multan - the Foreign Office actively advises against travel to Quetta and the Balochistan region along the Afghanistan border, for example - and it will take time for the country to feel truly accessible to the world once more. Maybe it never will be.

But last year, British Airways resumed its flights to Pakistan; in October, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge toured the region; and just a month ago the UK government altered its guidance to nationals for the first time since 2015, indicating that the security situation had significantly improved.

Truth and perception, however, can be very separate beasts, and there is still tremendous nervousness back home about the idea of travelling to the region. 

^{Moeen Ali, right, and Shan Masood in action}

It was clear from walking around the outfield, and talking to fans, and seeing the signs they wanted to show international viewers, that Pakistanis are desperate for the global community to start looking differently at their ugly duckling.

It is the PSL that offers them the chance to carry that message to the world. For that, and the competition’s continuing growth, the PCB should receive rare praise. 

The people of Multan are genuinely grateful to the men and women from the western world who have visited this week. It felt daft to shake the hands of so many in the crowd at the end of the match, and hear them thank me for being sent on assignment to watch cricket in their hometown. 

But, and this is what slapped me across the jowls a few hours ago, my visit is not really about cricket (you will have gained far more of an insight about this particular match by clicking on that link in the fourth paragraph, after all).

Instead, it’s about telling the story of a country that yearns to be seen in a new light, a country making a very public recuperation from a very difficult recent past.

Nights like tonight at the Multan International Stadium are among the first steps to a full recovery. It won’t be immediate, and it won’t be for everyone. But, boy, is it worth a go.