These are the Ramazan cricket and football matches after the breaking of the fast, that last till the break of dawn. Poor neighbourhood or rich, the pitch becomes the equal playing field. In Lyari, the football tournaments, popularly known as “units”, start after taraweeh prayers and go on till sehri with more than 32 teams standing against each other. “They improve the conditions of our neighbourhoods,” says Shakir Hussain, who is on the United Bank Limited team.
A single match lasts 40 minutes and there are two halves of 20 minutes each. Each team comes to the field with four to five players, many of whom play for various organisations and international forums. “I have been taking part in this tournament for three years now,” says young footballer Umar. “We prepare for this tournament all year round and we don’t care if we suffer injuries during the matches.”
Organiser Muhammad Yaqoob has watched the young men blossom. “It is like a nursery for young players,” he says. “They learn from here and then go on to play at bigger tournaments.” As the action unfolds, there are fans to cheer them on. They stay the whole night and go back home only after the last match ends.
Across the city, cricket enthusiasts from Korangi and Defence gather under the orange streetlights in the newly allotted Defence Phase VII. The number of people has doubled since the beginning of Ramazan but these tape-ball matches were regular on weekends before Ramazan.
“The roads are always empty and since they are new, they make the best pitch,” explains Ali Naqvi, a banker by profession whose team goes every Friday and Saturday night.
According to him, the streetlights “magically” switch on every day at 10 pm. “We don’t know who switches them on,” he claims. “We gather at a friend’s house in Phase VIII and when we see that the lights are on, we go play.”
The cricket pitches in this area are not restricted to Defence residents and scores of men stream in from Korangi on their motorcycles. Tournaments take place in other areas but we only play individual matches here, Ali adds.
Each game consists of at least 20 players on both teams. Given the number of both single and double roads in the area, there are around 13 matches going on at any one point. Sometimes, when there are too many people and teams have to play on both sides of the double road. “Recently, the shrubs in the empty plots grew and the ball gets lost in them,” Ali complains. During their last match, they spent 15 minutes looking for the ball after every shot.
There is a tacit approval for the down-time from the DHA authorities. They don’t stop them from playing given that there are no houses in the vicinity. But there is one man who is unhappy with the matches.
He is the security guard at DHA College for Women, in Phase VII. The boys make him go inside the building to fetch the ball and once he even caught a boy climbing over the wall to fetch the ball himself.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 20th, 2010.
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