Islamabad United has no ground to call home

Cricket may be returning, but city’s citizens are still starved of places to play

ISLAMABAD: Sunday brought a second winner’s trophy for Islamabad United — by far the most prolific team in Pakistan Super League. Ironically, the team has no real presence in the city apart from on some billboards.

Worryingly the team cannot really even play in front of its home fans even if it wanted to since the city lacks a professional cricket stadium, and has unsurprisingly listed the Rawalpindi cricket stadium as its home ground in official paraphernalia.

Even youngsters in the city, playing amateur cricket, often find it hard to find a place to play in the city owing to encroachment or illegal occupation of the grounds by some private cricketing clubs or the outright absence of these grounds.

The Capital Development Authority (CDA), the main body responsible for creating sporting grounds in the city, has developed some hockey, football, and cricket ground along with some multipurpose sports grounds in different sectors of the federal capital.



“The main idea behind the development of sports grounds in Islamabad was to provide healthy sports facilities to the youth of the city,” an official of Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation’s (IMC) Sports and Culture Directorate told The Express Tribune on the condition of anonymity. “But such services are not available for everyone in federal capital as many grounds are still under the illegal occupation of some individuals under the garb of private clubs.”

There are eight cricket grounds which were occupied by private clubs who rent them out for a fee. These are located in Sector F-7/1, Sector F-11/1, Sector G-11/1, Sector  G-7 Markaz, Sector F-7/3, Margalla Road, Sector G-8/2, and the Saidpur cricket ground.

Last year, the IMC had launched an operation against such individuals and managed to retrieve five grounds from their illegal possession which the clubs used to rent out.

IMC Mayor Sheikh Anser Aziz had vowed to retrieve all such grounds and had launched an action against illegal occupants but he had to succumb to the pressure of influential occupants and operation was halted.

Sources in the IMC said that when they sealed the Shalimar Ground, a close relative of the former prime minister had allegedly influenced the mayor to yield control of the ground back to the private club from whom it had been wrested from.

Similarly, when IMC tried to retrieve the ground located in Sector G-8/2, an office bearer of the Islamabad Cricket Association (ICA) managed to obtain a stay order from a court. Ultimately, the IMC had to abandon its operation.

IMC Sport and Culture Assistant Director Shahzad Ahmed, while speaking to The Express Tribune, categorically stated that it was illegal to rent out public grounds and that whenever they received complaints about it, they took indiscriminate action against unscrupulous elements.

“We have received complains that some elements are secretly charging fees for allowing the use of grounds from residents under the pretext of club fees in a clandestine manner,” Ahmed said, adding that according to a new policy, clubs had been allowed to use the grounds on specific days.



He added that the situation had significantly improved since they undertook an operation last year in which the IMC had sealed several grounds which had been illegally occupied by certain individuals.

Stadium

Despite all the grounds in the capital, none of them can boast international standards, and thus be eligible to host a PSL match featuring Islamabad United.

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) had planned to build a stadium per international standards in the Shakarparian area of the city.

The CDA and the PCB had also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in 2012 in this regard. The civic authority had subsequently allotted 35 acres near Shakarparian for the construction of the stadium.

It was a lucrative deal for the CDA who stood to take home 30 per cent of the proceeds from any international match played apart from a share in the sponsorships. The remaining 70 per cent would go to the PCB.

The stadium was supposed to cost around Rs2 billion, and the entire project was supposed to have been completed within a year.

However, the National Council for Conservation of Wildlife (NCCW), the Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency (Pak-EPA), environmentalists, parliamentarians, and former International Cricket Council (ICC) President Ehsan Mani had dismissed the viability of the facility — primarily because international cricket was yet to return to the country at the time and the PSL was not even on the horizon.

Environmentalists were of the view that permission for building a stadium in Shakarparian would be a sheer violation of the Islamabad Wildlife (Protection, Preservation, Conservation and Management) Ordinance 1979, as well as a violation of the city’s master plan.

Former cricket team manager Saleem Asghar Mian and Mani had argued that the stadium would be bad for the city’s green image and would likely turn into a white elephant. They suggested that the money would be better spent upgrading the Rawalpindi stadium which is located just five kilometres from the proposed site.

Since then, the projects was shelved by the PCB.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 26^th, 2018.