Double Headers

116 Pakistan - Last home of the double-header Karachi Harbour in 2005/06, and five played for Karachi Urban; and of those who played for Karachi Whites in 2004/05, six played for Karachi Harbour in 2005/06, and six for Karachi Urban. At the other end of the Karachi ‘interregnum’, in 2007/08, Karachi Urban played one final match at the start of the season, in the annual challenge match between the winners of the QeA and the winners of India’s Ranji Trophy. Of the 11 ‘Urban’ players in this match, two went on to play for Karachi Blues in the 2007/08 QeA, and one for Karachi Whites. The remaining eight all played for departmental sides. In Lahore there was rather more correspondence between Blues-Ravi and Whites-Shalimar: nine of the 2004/05 ‘Blues’ squad turned out for Ravi in 2005/06, as against only three turning out for Shalimar; while ten of the 2004/05 ‘Whites’ squad played for Shalimar in 2005/06, again with only three turning out for rivals Ravi. Although this pattern of doubling in domestic competitions in Pakistan may seem like a duplication of the pattern in South Africa from 1959/60, there were two major differences. The first is that the Pakistani sides – those with colour names, at least – were not actually or implicitly their organisations’ First and Second (and Third) Elevens. Leading Pakistan statistician Abid Ali Kazi has confirmed to me 96 that players were and are allocated to one ‘colour’ squad or another at the start of the season, with a view to distributing player strength evenly. However, while this may be true nowadays, it does not always seem to have been the case – for example, in almost all seasons where an organisation was represented by sides labelled ‘A’ and ‘B’ (and sometimes ‘C’), the ‘A’ side ended the season with the best record, which suggests that player-selections were merit-based and designed to identify First and Second (and Third) XIs. The only exception to this pattern came when Karachi C reached the QeA final in 1957/58, ahead of the Karachi A and B teams. Thus each side has its own separate player-squad, and there can be no switching by a player within one season from one side to another – unlike in South Africa, where players regularly turned out for both the provincial ‘A’ and B elevens in the same season. However, there was no reason why a player should not move between, say, the Whites and the Blues between seasons, and this happened frequently. As examples chosen at random, Test player Wallis Mathias played in the QeA for Karachi Blues in 1956/57, moved to the Whites in 1961/62, went back to the Blues again in 1964/65, and returned once more to the Whites in 1969/70; while more recently Hasan Raza (the youngest-ever Test cricketer, allegedly) played for Karachi Blues in 1996/97, for the Whites between 1997/98 and 2001/02, and for the Blues again in 2004/05, since which date his domestic cricket has mostly been for Habib Bank. These examples give some credence to the impression that, at least in the early days in Karachi, the Whites were regarded as the senior side, with the Blues as next best, and the Greens as a team of promising young players. Thus in 1956/57 Karachi Whites included in their sides regular 96 In a private e-mail dated 13 October 2008.