Sons of the soil
It’s a hot day in Lahore. Every day is hot during the summer and this one is no different. The Gaddafi Stadium lies empty, its stands under construction and the grass, untrodden, a lush green.
It is humbling for any cricket lover to walk on these hallowed grounds and think of all the matches now etched into cricket lore. I can clearly recall the win over South Africa in 2003, with Shoaib Akhtar in his element. The defining moment of that match was a vicious bouncer from Shoaib that sent Gary Kirsten to the hospital. After the ball hit Kirsten, Shoaib held him in his arms till the stretcher arrived — a rare trading of masculine aggression for compassion and concern. But just as much as the ground is an institution of Pakistan cricket, so is its ground staff, particularly the Chief Coordinator Haji Mohammad Bashir who has worked there since 1959, the year the Gaddafi Stadium hosted its first Test match.
“The grass looks like this because there is no cricket happening here,” says Haji Sahib, as his colleagues call him. These days, his voice contains a deep melancholy, the kind that stirs the listener enough to feel some of his loss. His eyes swell with tears at the lack of international cricket in Pakistan. “I pray to Allah that the grounds are filled and that good cricket is played here,” he says. But there is much more to what he says than lament. Haji Sahib is one of those people whose work defines them, and he has a great deal of pride in his accomplishments. There is a little bit of his legacy in every ground in Pakistan.
Groundsmen at the Gaddafi Stadium yearn for the days when there used to be international cricket there
“I helped build the ground in Sialkot, I remade the pitch at the National Stadium, Karachi, and most of the other grounds.” He says this believing in the value of his work is a lasting contribution to cricket and to Pakistan. “All the groundsmen in Pakistan have learnt something from him [Haji Sahib],” adds Abdul Ghani, the head curator at Gaddafi Stadium. “Some people work in the limelight, and other people work in the shadows.”