Pakistani pride and passion

A difficult year did not stop fans from coming out to watch the first game – with or without tickets, writes Chuck Culpepper.

Hundreds of Pakistan supporters gathered outside the Zayed Cricket Stadium despite not having tickets last night.

People who love a sport as much as anybody ever loved any sport gathered last night at Zayed Cricket Stadium.

They gathered upon sand just outside the edifice if we must dwell in technicality, but that detail itself illustrates their possible leadership in the global love-thy-sport derby.

The ticketless again proved peerless in their devotion to Pakistan's favourite game, their fervency epitomised by Zia-ul-Haq, a worker from Peshawar who required an hour just to reach the stadium.

As his listener envisioned a slow-moving bus, he suddenly said, "I walked here."

He joined a cluster of Pakistani fans who proved adept at finding the openings in the stadium that allow for sight lines toward the video-aided scoreboard, with his cluster not to be confused with the tens of other clusters that ringed the stadium.

It has been a difficult year for Pakistan cricket, pardon the understatement, but as for the notion of hardship possibly snuffing out love, forget that. "It would take centuries to kill," said Abdul Rehman, a Pakistani from Kohat in the northwest who has lived in the UAE for 25 years since childhood. "Because it will go through sons and sons and sons. I don't think you can kill it, no."

As evidence on a Tuesday night around the arena, men stood. They stood with arms folded or they stood leaning upon a nearby shoulder. They stood craning their necks just across a little asphalt lane from the stadium, or they stood back farther trying to take in more from the depth, or they finished standing and sat upon a sand ridge that allowed a vantage point from well back into the open space.

They stood gazing toward an oval they could not really see but looked as if they could see it anyway.

At one point at the outset, about 200 stood up close to the stadium, but a police vehicle nearby broadcasted instructions for them to back up, so they retreated cooperatively across the little lane to the sand, where they stood viewing a distant video screen at a distance that cried out for binoculars.

Within that group, Akbar Zaib, a worker from Karachi, explained he knew of no ticket below Dh75, prohibitive for himself and the men around him. Yet he said, "When I come here I am happy. I am happy when it's Pakistan, my country."

As a cheer went up from inside the stadium, indicating something, Zia said, "Everybody in Pakistan loves cricket, and not just the Pakistan team but every team playing here."

He soon added: "Too much love."

Up the lane alongside the stadium, the vantage points dried up for maybe 30 yards, occluded by the ridge that held fans sitting upon grass inside the oval. Once that ridge ended, though, another opening appeared, and about 50 men took advantage of that. With maybe a squint from there, they could see scoreboard messages such as, "Well Fielded", "Great Catch", "Huge" or "March 1, 1980", which would be the date of Shahid Afridi's birth. If careful enough, they also could see a ball from Afridi fly through the sky, whereupon two taxi drivers standing together, Mohammed and Naqeeb, hollered, "Six!"

When Rehman and his friend and co-worker Ikram arrived, the two young men had thought to get tickets but quickly decided to remain outside among the uncommonly staunch.

"I told him we can enjoy more here, the atmosphere is better out here," Ikram said.

Set back from the clusters closer to the stadium, and not so far in front of 24 men strewn upon a ridge in the sand, they waited for Afridi but, Rehman said: "We just came to see him and he is out. It's already over. The game is over."

"He's just kidding," Ikram said, and Shakira's voice rang audibly from inside, and eventually came Umar Gul, whom Ikram explained played with his older brother in his home area of Swat. They looked ahead of them to the men about 30 yards in front, and Rehman said: "Cricket is in their blood, you know. If Pakistan lose now," he said, they would swear off cricket, "and they will say we not going to give this any time anymore. But then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, they will come back again. They are hardworking but to see cricket, they are so energetic for that."

As Pakistan finished batting, though, Rehman predicted - correctly - that some of them would begin to move along back down the little lane toward home. Most of them, he explained, would have to work this morning. And some of the estimated 500 fans who gathered outside the stadium, of course, would have to start considerable and rather touching walks.