None of England’s 915 previous Test matches, at 64 different venues, has taken place in a setting quite so strange as Dubai’s International Cricket Stadium.
Green army: a small, loyal contingent of Pakistan fans cheer England's capitulation in Dubai
When Wilfred Thesiger became the first explorer to walk across Arabia from west to east little more than 60 years ago, he ended up in these parts - and the UAE, apart from a few mud-brick houses around Dubai Creek, was no different from the Empty Quarter he had just crossed.
So this stadium has been built in what was desert and is now a sandy
construction site on the southern fringes of Dubai. The nearest buildings
are tower blocks that have been left incomplete or uninhabited, and which
heighten the effect of strangeness, as we tend to associate buildings with
people.
The stadium inside is a £50 million state-of-the-art miracle in the face of
nature. It seats a capacity crowd of 25,000 more comfortably than any other
ground in world cricket - if only there had been a crowd.
Instead, the stadium contained about 1,000 England supporters on Tuesday,
watching their team seize up against Saeed Ajmal and his fellow spinners.
Chris Tremlett had not been able to see the ball because of an inflammation
in his right eye, and his condition seemed to have infected England’s
entire top order. In total, perhaps 1,200 spectators attended.
At the start of play, however, Pakistan
supporters in the stadium numbered exactly 21. The ‘crowd’ supporting what
was officially the home team grew to about 200 during the day, when the
temperatures were perfect, neither too hot in the sun nor too cool in the
shade. But when this series began, Pakistan supporters numbered 21.
You could seize on this figure as evidence of the decline, or imminent death,
of Test cricket. But it would be fairer to observe that, back in Pakistan,
Karachi and Lahore have not drawn Test crowds since the Seventies, and
Faisalabad only did so in the Eighties because the municipality ran the Test
match and forced local factories to buy tickets.
Before 1980 in Pakistan, as in India, a capacity crowd would turn up every Test match day, even if a stultifying draw was a foregone conclusion, because no other form of mass entertainment except the cinema existed.
It was also the opportunity for a mass protest, in front of foreign media, against the latest military dictator.
Mudassar Nazar scored the slowest Test century of all time, against England at Lahore in 1977, in front of a crowd of 50,000. He is now a coach at the ICC Global Academy down the road from the Dubai stadium and laughs about his unwanted record, saying he wished Geoff Boycott had never retired.
Once television and limited-overs cricket were popularised in Pakistan, the Test match crowds went home and have never returned – not that they have had a chance to return since March 2009, when terrorists struck at the Sri Lankan team in Lahore.
So if you think yesterday’s crowd was small, I would wager it was bigger than on any day of the Pakistan v England Test at Lahore in 1987 – the Test when Mike Gatting had his first, sour, taste of local umpires, who were under strict instructions to make sure Pakistan saved face after losing their World Cup semi-final in Lahore.
If you think the crowd yesterday was small, I would wager – with the permission of the ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, of course – that it was bigger than the one on the last day of the Karachi Test of 2000.
This was the day of England’s thrilling run-chase that ended Pakistan’s unbeaten Test record in Karachi, in the dark.
As Pakistanis who work in the Gulf are almost exclusively manual labourers, working on construction and driving taxis at all hours, they are about as likely to find the time and spare money to attend a day of Test cricket as Victorian factory-workers before the Factory Acts – even though prices start at £4 for this Dubai Test, and at zero for the second in Abu Dhabi.
In an ideal world, free of guns and bombs, Pakistan would now be hosting England in a five-match series: perhaps in Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Faisalabad or Multan, and Karachi. Both sides, in every sense, would get to know each other better.
As it is, though, people were watching the Test match yesterday, not at the ground but on television in Pakistan.
Figures for this match will not be known until its end. But it is known that for Pakistan’s last ‘home’ Test series, against Sri Lanka in the Gulf, the television audience in Pakistan was an average of 1.8 million per day, and five to six million for the one-day and Twenty20 internationals.
It is safe to assume that ratings will be higher for this series, and that at least two million people in Pakistan were watching their spinners bamboozle England, which is pretty healthy. And maybe Pakistan’s cricket, like the tower blocks outside Dubai’s stadium, will one day be whole and complete.
Before 1980 in Pakistan, as in India, a capacity crowd would turn up every Test match day, even if a stultifying draw was a foregone conclusion, because no other form of mass entertainment except the cinema existed.
It was also the opportunity for a mass protest, in front of foreign media, against the latest military dictator.
Mudassar Nazar scored the slowest Test century of all time, against England at Lahore in 1977, in front of a crowd of 50,000. He is now a coach at the ICC Global Academy down the road from the Dubai stadium and laughs about his unwanted record, saying he wished Geoff Boycott had never retired.
Once television and limited-overs cricket were popularised in Pakistan, the Test match crowds went home and have never returned – not that they have had a chance to return since March 2009, when terrorists struck at the Sri Lankan team in Lahore.
So if you think yesterday’s crowd was small, I would wager it was bigger than on any day of the Pakistan v England Test at Lahore in 1987 – the Test when Mike Gatting had his first, sour, taste of local umpires, who were under strict instructions to make sure Pakistan saved face after losing their World Cup semi-final in Lahore.
If you think the crowd yesterday was small, I would wager – with the permission of the ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, of course – that it was bigger than the one on the last day of the Karachi Test of 2000.
This was the day of England’s thrilling run-chase that ended Pakistan’s unbeaten Test record in Karachi, in the dark.
As Pakistanis who work in the Gulf are almost exclusively manual labourers, working on construction and driving taxis at all hours, they are about as likely to find the time and spare money to attend a day of Test cricket as Victorian factory-workers before the Factory Acts – even though prices start at £4 for this Dubai Test, and at zero for the second in Abu Dhabi.
In an ideal world, free of guns and bombs, Pakistan would now be hosting England in a five-match series: perhaps in Peshawar, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Faisalabad or Multan, and Karachi. Both sides, in every sense, would get to know each other better.
As it is, though, people were watching the Test match yesterday, not at the ground but on television in Pakistan.
Figures for this match will not be known until its end. But it is known that for Pakistan’s last ‘home’ Test series, against Sri Lanka in the Gulf, the television audience in Pakistan was an average of 1.8 million per day, and five to six million for the one-day and Twenty20 internationals.
It is safe to assume that ratings will be higher for this series, and that at least two million people in Pakistan were watching their spinners bamboozle England, which is pretty healthy. And maybe Pakistan’s cricket, like the tower blocks outside Dubai’s stadium, will one day be whole and complete.
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