“Hyderabad, are you ready!” screams a poster with a mugshot of Fawad Sarwar Khan ahead of February 7’s mega event of his Pakistan Super League (PSL) team.

The 11th edition of PSL — which has entered its second decade since its launch — is scheduled to begin on March 26. Fawad’s newly acquired Hyderabad team will feature this season as the seventh team.

The team’s logo and name will be unveiled on Saturday evening with great fanfare during a ceremony at the historic Niaz Stadium.

Posters of Fawad and other team staff are hanging on a row of trees off Thandi Sarak and other locations.

Former Australian coach Jason Gillespie is likely to attend the ceremony as Hyderabad team’s head coach — first ever appearance of any international former cricket of this stature in the last over one and a half decades in the stadium.

Saim Ayub, who recently made it to the list of top T20I all-rounders thanks to his stellar performance, is said to have been picked for Hyderabad.

Vibes are that Fawad’s management is said to be in contact with Sameer Minhas, a Pakistan U-19 player and Saad Khan from Hyderabad in the “emerging” category. A final decision is awaited.

Fawad Sarwar Khan is a Hyderabad native, now settled in the United States.

By buying this franchise for PSL, he has indeed given the people of Hyderabad, Sindh’s second largest city, a cause to celebrate or, in fact, a sense of ownership to this city where talent is thriving in streets, roads and neighbourhoods. But such potential remains largely untapped.

While two teams – Sialkot and Hyderabad – are sold, hype over Hyderabad’s team is seemingly unusual.

After watching him on television screens to offer his bid in the Pakistan Cricket Board’s (PCB) auction for teams and finally picking Hyderabad, Fawad’s schoolmates started revealing their association with him. Some opted for being photographed outside his Latifabad residence.

When asked by the host to pick any of the teams, a beaming and somewhat excited Fawad wasted no time in opting for the name of ‘Hyderabad’ — his birthplace — quickly.

He recalled his upbringing, school and college education in this city where his father worked in a textile mills thus winning accolades like ‘sacha sapoot’ (true son) of Hyderabad over social media platforms for living up to people’s expectations. Hyderabadis have now pinned high hopes on him to keep the city’s historic cricket legacy intact.

Fawad’s US-based FKS Group acquired ‘Hyderabad’ for PSL XI as the league’s seventh team for Rs1.75bn per annum for ten years in a keenly contested auction in Islamabad on January 8.

“Hyderabad Royals” came as a quick proposal on social media for naming the team by a veteran sports journalist Qamar Ahmed, considering the historical past of the city that has served as the capital under the Kalhoro and Talpur dynasties in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Fawad’s team, Kingsmen, has been participating in Pakistan’s domestic circuit for a couple of years, and Danyal Rajput, an all-rounder from Hyderabad city, is playing for Kingsmen. Some believe that he would today name the Hyderabad team after ‘Kingsmen’.

Fawad used to live in unit-6 Latifabad and studied in the missionary school St. Bonaventure, then in Hyderabad’s Public School for intermediate education before moving to the US. “He will be reaching Pakistan tomorrow [Saturday],” says Syed Saad, a coordinator of Fawad’s team who is making arrangements for today’s event.

The January 8 auction ended an agonising wait for the people of Hyderabad. Since then, the announcement has led to excitement among people, especially cricket-crazy ones.

“It is like a dream coming true,” quips local journalist Waqas Arain. “We can now anticipate that cricket activities will show a noticeable growth in the city,” an optimistic Arain adds.

Weather conditions are ideal today to host the mega event to make the evening enjoyable after a long, long time in the city. The show will have a drone extravaganza in addition to a display of fireworks.

Niaz Stadium’s return to glory?

Hyderabad’s history, even otherwise, is replete with interesting cricket contests as well as records. The city has produced international cricketers like Faisal Athar, Sharjeel Khan and lately Noman Ali and Mohammad Hasnain.

The Niaz Stadium has to its credit various important cricket records.

It is where Jalaluddin staged his first hat-trick of international cricket in September 1982 during a match against Australia in his small career, in which he played six tests and eight ODIs. He got the opportunity to play this match due to the shoulder injury of then-skipper Imran Khan.

Interestingly enough, it was Geoff Lawson’s scalp which led to his hat-trick. The former Australian cricketer coached the Pakistan team later on in 2008.

“Yes, I do remember that match because mine was the third wicket of that hat-trick,” Lawson Geoff had told Dawn in Jan 2008 at Niaz Stadium, where Pakistan trounced Zimbabwe in an ODI.

Geoff recalled that very test match after arriving at the stadium 26 years later. “It was very hard at that time to have a lengthy drive. It took us six hours to reach Hyderabad and then back to Karachi,” Lawson had told Dawn after net practice.

The legendary Javed Miandad hit a superb unbeaten knock of 280 when Imran-led Pakistan claimed 6/35 — one of his best bowling figures — to win the test by an innings and 119 runs.

Now-interned and cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan also played the last ODI of his career at the stadium in 1992 against Sri Lanka before proceeding to participate and clinch the World Cup that year in March.

Miandad again remained unbeaten at 115 off 103 balls in the same ODI here. Intikhab Alam hit his career’s solo century at this ground, while celebrated commentator Chishti Mujahid made his debut as a commentator at the same stadium as well.

Established in November 1961, thanks to the efforts of then-commissioner Niaz Ahmed, Niaz Stadium hosted domestic and international cricket matches with a capacity of 10,000, though some estimates put it at close to 15,000.

The inaugural first-class match was played here between South Zone and Pakistan Education Board on March 16-18, 1962.

It hosted the first international Test between Pakistan and England from March 16 to March 21, 1973. The stadium, in all, hosted five Tests and seven ODIs till January 2008. It is counted among Pakistan’s top 10 stadiums and has the potential to lure cricket fanatics whenever a mega event is held here.

The 1997 match between Pakistan and India at this ground was another historic moment of cricket when the Sachin Tendulkar-led team arrived here to face Saeed Anwar’s side, only to lose the match badly.

PCB High Performance Director Aqib Javed had claimed four important wickets in the match alongside Waqar Younis, then Pakistan’s pace sensation. All cricket luminaries like Mohammad Azharuddin, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and Ajay Jadeja were part of the touring side.

Aqib still enjoys recalling his wicket of Dravid in that ODI.

“It was a slow delivery. Rahul [Dravid] failed to read the ball that dismissed him after he had just hit a half-century,” Aqib says laughingly. “Dravid fell on the pitch while trying to play my delivery that bowled him”, he says.

Aaqib rates Hyderabad’s stadium very highly. “When compared with Silakot’s ground, Niaz Stadium is ideally located,” he said.

He pointed out that Sialkot’s Jinnah Stadium was located in the midst of the city, which was not viable for security reasons. “But Niaz Stadium’s location is a perfectly ideal one and I must say it needs to be developed, and the PCB chairman has said that this stadium must be developed,” he noted.

The stadium has been badly ignored in the last three decades.

The 2008 ODI was staged only after the ground was handed over to PCB under a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed in July 2007 by the then-Hyderabad district nazim, late Kunwar Naveed Jamil.

PCB was supposed to control the entire infrastructure of the stadium after taking over its administrative control under that MoU.

However, as international cricket eluded Pakistan after the March 2009 attack on Sri Lanka’s team in Lahore, Hyderabad only hosted domestic circuit matches.

After taking control of the ground in 2007, PCB put the infrastructure development of the stadium on the back burner while investing heavily in new projects of stadiums/academies elsewhere.

No development work of note was initiated for which its administrative control was obtained on a lease basis from Hyderabad’s district government by the Dr Nasim Ashraf-led board under the MoU signed in July 2007.

The stadium’s golden jubilee celebrations in 2012 were observed without any formal ceremony under Zaka Ashraf-led PCB. It proved to be a damp squib. An exhibition match was organised to mark the occasion in the presence of Ashraf, who at the time announced the installation of floodlights at the stadium, which has yet to happen.

Administrative control of the ground was forcibly taken over in 2018 by Qasimabad Municipal Committee (MC) chairman Kashif Ali Shoro, who now happens to be Hyderabad’s mayor. Shoro had revoked that MoU unilaterally, but now he is proudly co-hosting today’s event.

Shoro is believed to have offered to hand over the stadium to PCB again for organising international cricket and PSL matches, ironically though.

But for young cricketers, the induction of Hyderabad in PSL marks the return of cricket to the city. This international cricket centre serves as an important venue.

The Pakistan cricket team has an unbeaten record here at this ground in both Tests and ODIs so far. So, it is precisely a lucky venue for the Green Shirts.

Hope for young talent

Ayan Ali, a right-arm fast bowler, is quite passionate about playing for Pakistan. He is currently playing in the Hyderabad region’s U-15 matches.

“Induction of Hyderabad into PSL will help cricketers like me a lot. It will improve cricket and we are bound to learn after seeing stars playing in front of us,” says an excited Ayan.

He hopes someday he will also be among the Green Shirts.

Pakistan’s off-spinner Noman Ali started his cricketing career from this city. Ali reminisced about the day when he was a young chap and had to scale over the wall of the stadium to watch a match between PIA and Hyderabad division. His uncle Rizwan Ahmed was playing in that match.

“This is going to benefit Hyderabad a lot. I am emotionally connected with this ground as my career began from here,” he said.

Cricket enthusiasts have been craving to see cricket returning to the historic stadium — venue of 1987’s Reliance World Cup’s inaugural match between Imran Khan-led Pakistan vs Sri Lanka, which the former won.

“This is going to boost cricket activities here,” comments Faisal Athar, PCB’s level-3 coach for the Larkana region.

Athar, a right-hand batter, represented Pakistan under Rashid Latif’s captaincy against New Zealand and Sri Lanka.

According to him, the youth of this city, who used to feel deprived, now have a chance to try their luck with full potential.

“If Fawad sahib is able to invest in Hyderabad’s cricket infrastructure, it will benefit not only Hyderabad but cricketers of lower Sindh,” he believed.

“Fawad can do so many things, such as the establishment of a cricket academy,” Athar added.

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