Double Headers

115 Pakistan - Last home of the double-header This listing only shows instances in which two teams from the same organisation took part in the same competition in the same year. There have also been occasions where two teams from an organisation played in one competition in a particular year, but combined to enter a single team in a different competition in the same year - e.g. Karachi entered a single side in the Ayub Trophy in seasons from 1961/62 to 1964/65, when multiple Karachi teams were playing in the QeA. There have also been occasions when only one ‘colour’ side participated in a particular competition in some years - e.g. Karachi Blues, but no other Karachi side, played in the Patron’s Trophy in 1986/87 and 1987/88. The listing also shows that since the late 1970s only the two traditional centres of Karachi and Lahore – the latter known for a while as Lahore City, to distinguish it from a separate side representing the parts of the Lahore administrative division outside the city, which was known as Lahore Division 92 – have been allowed to enter more than one team in particular competitions on a regular basis, though an exception was, apparently reluctantly, made in the mid-1990s to allow two teams from Rawalpindi to play in the first-class section of the QeA. 93 Since 1983/84 there have been no instances of an organisation being allowed to enter more than two teams in any competition. That this was a rule rather than just a convention was shown when Karachi Greens won the non-first-class Grade II of the QeA at the end of the 1995/96 season, which would normally have entitled them to promotion to Grade I, but they were denied promotion partly because of a proposed restructuring of the QeA competition for the following season, but also because Karachi already had two sides (Whites and Blues) in the top division. 94 Finally, the listing shows the preponderant use of colour-names to distinguish one side from another. However, this pattern was broken in 2005/06 when both Karachi and Lahore chose to distinguish their sides by the use of geographical names 95 , though Karachi reverted to the colour pattern two seasons later. As far as it is possible to tell from an analysis of their players, there was no direct correspondence between the Karachi Urban and Harbour sides and the earlier, or subsequent, Blues and Whites, although there was rather more correspondence between the Lahore ‘old’ and ‘new’ sides. Thus of those who played for Karachi Blues in 2004/05, four played for 92 ‘Lahore Division’ were a separate side - sometimes first-class, sometimes not, depending on the outcomes of promotions and relegations - between 1978/79 and 1998/99, after which the administrative units known as Divisions were abolished. During this period the Lahore Division team was run by a separate Cricket Association from that running the Lahore City sides, and so simultaneous matches by a Lahore City side and a Lahore Division side did not constitute double-headers within the meaning used in this book. 93 The promotion for 1994/95 of Rawalpindi B, Grade II winners in 1993/94, was initially refused after a ruling that only Karachi and Lahore could field more than one team at the top level. This decision was later reversed, in time for Rawalpindi B to participate in full in the 1994/95 QeA. No comparable situation involving ‘second teams’ from outside Karachi or Lahore has arisen since. (See Wisden 1995 p. 1248, and 1996 pp. 1253-4.) 94 Wisden 1997, page 1225. 95 Ravi and Shalimar are two of the ‘towns’ that make up the administrative division of Lahore.