Even till the late 1960s two major activities made up life inside the old walled city. Women borrowed and read books from the ‘Anna Library’ and though men also were avid book readers, their primary passion was cricket.

In the late 1960s, after school my first task was to slip into my cricketing whites, bat in hand would cycle all the way to Minto Park. In the nets of the famous Crescent Club I would face the fiercest fast bowlers of the day. That was my high. In this day and age it seems club cricket has been pushed out of the Sports Pages of newspapers. Commercially-financed cricket is the vogue. After a grueling three months of competition all we won was a towel.

In the pre-Partition days when Crescent played Mamdot Cricket Club the entire walled city was at a standstill. This was especially true when the Government College-Islamia College match was on, in which my elder brother returned home with blood-stained bandage on his head. My late father, himself a former GC-Crescent player of the 1930s, ignored the bandage and asked ‘who won?’ The frenzy in the old walled city was such that score boards were brought out in almost every mohallah and the young would do the running.

It has been over half a century since I last walked away from the nets at Minto Park and a thousand amazing memories. When I sat down to research a piece of Lahore’s greatest money-lender Bulaki Shah, I discovered that he was the main sponsor of my old club, which the record says was set up by him and other business persons in 1895. So today my old club is 125 years old. That is older than most English cricket clubs. In the early days it used to hold its nets outside Mochi Gate in the Circular Gardens. It was then very much an elitist sport.

As Crescent came about an immediate rival arose, and that was Mamdot Cricket Club. The Lahore Gymkhana Club was then very much a ‘ruling class’ club and even stepping onto their ground became a much discussed matter in the walled city. To find out more about how Crescent was doing I rang up the current captain of the club Arif Rashid and he informed that ever since Minto Park was converted into a tourist resort they have shifted to Shahdara of all places. There in the grounds of a well-known matchstick factory, thanks to Mian Aslam, they practice in the morning, while the factory team uses the premises in the evening. Sadly, he informs, that Mamdot has ceased to exist. A few other well-known clubs have also ceased to exist. In such a situation street cricket is their refuge.

One feels bad that such a famous 125-year old cricket club of ‘Lahore fame’ as people in the old city say, surely among the finest in the pre-Partition and also the post-Partition period in the entire sub-continent, and in all these 125 years they have not managed to have their own ground. Surely for the rich cricket lovers of Lahore it is no big problem if they get together. Imagine a beautiful green grassy ground, a beautiful pavilion and huge green trees all around. The mirage is amazing.

But over the years, the names who have played for Crescent inspire awe. Thanks to research by the amazing Mr Najam Latif, that cricket fanatic of Lahore, one has been able to piece together a lot of names. Imagine a cricketing legend like Lala Amarnath gracing the Mochi Gate ground. His sons, as we all know, excelled for India. Much later he was joined by Hafeez Kardar, who left Mamdot over differences and played for Crescent. Names like Haji Tawakkal, Mirza Muzaffar Baig and Wali Muhammad were also popular. Najam Latif describes an incident where a bouncer from the great West Indian Sir Learie Constantine was edged (by accident one presumes) for a four as he closed his eyes. In Minto Park folklore he was known as ‘Wali Churr’ or Wali the Edger.

The club’s Hall of Fame has names like Surinder Khanna (later president of the BCCI), Ram Parkash, Nazar Muhammad, Amir Elahi, Agha Saadat, Maqsood Ahmed, Duncan Sharpe, Zulfiqar Ahmed, Ijaz Butt, Muhammad Ilyas, Younis Ahmed and Saleem Altaf, all Test cricketers of Pakistan. When I joined the club thanks to my father’s friend Saleem Baig, the APP journalist, it was known as a sure-shot route to the top. Our captain was Mian Bashir, the Test cricketer and Railways captain and the manager was Munawwar Hussain Shah.

The cultural ethos of the club was something that came much in use as I grew up. After practice everyone walked to the main road outside the Lahore Fort. There they stopped and everyone looked at me and said: “Now go home young man, beyond this point is not for you”. Even while in the nets that respect remained. How can I forget when Saleem Altaf, the famous fast Test bowler returned from England wearing a beautiful white woolen sweater? We looked in awe as if it was a prized possession. As he bowled his ‘thunder bolts’ at me with what he described ‘the red cherry’ it came bullet-like towards my head. I ducked only for the ball to edge skywards and into the Budda Ravi. Oh, the Test bowler was incensed. Mian Bashir ran towards him saying: “You want to kill him”. Thus I survived.

But in those days many a character existed on the sidelines, who walked over from the walled city with their friends to enjoy the classy players in action, and I am not referring to myself. One famous person well-known in Minto Park was a gent by the name of Bhatti. His specialty was to shout in chaste ‘Lahori Punjabi’ the physical attributes of every person on the field. He kept the humour alive. Everyone dreaded his descriptions, which one can say were graphic and near the truth. They were enough to put a man in his place. For me he had the pet phrase ‘Goora Sheesha’, which meant I played straight, at least that is what I thought. Many thought he spared me out of respect. But others he virtually slayed.

All these thoughts make me question just why has club cricket declined and just why have the old famous clubs not managed to survive and have their own grounds. If an eight acre piece of land is purchased outside the city that would mean having a masterpiece of a beautiful green ground, a pavilion and beautiful trees. What better investment is possible for the young of today and future Test players of our country?

Surely the business houses of today are richer than what Bulaki Shah was. But then the money-lender was the loser because at the Partition when the hundreds that people owed him were lost. In India, he tore up his registers saying: “I forgive everyone”.

The children of today love their cricket and in the streets outside every house, in the village fields, in the mountains, they are practicing. From them emerge the stars of tomorrow. The GC-Islamia match is no longer held in the University Grounds. Just like we have banned Basant because our inept police cannot control under-aged helmet-less motorcyclists and blame the string for it, in the same way the rich, and hence the rulers, have no clue just where to invest for the future of our youth.

Maybe the government should think of a tax rebate on investments in such activity. Maybe, that is the way forward. For a happier city we need more libraries - big and small – we need archives for research, more museums for our education to have depth, and we need cricket and other sports grounds. Surely a greener more learned Lahore is the need of the hour.

Published in Dawn, November 8th, 2020