t won’t be hyperbole to call Pakistan Super League aka PSL’s Twenty20 cricket tournament the country’s biggest cricketing event yet, both in terms of scale and budget. In its 9^th year, the popularity of this month-long mega event cuts across age groups and backgrounds. You can sense the festivity in the air, typically around February-March every year. For the entertainment starved Lahoris, who badly miss Basant, PSL quite makes up for it. Or, does it?

No wonder they call it the PSL season.

It brings to life the Gaddafi Stadium, the celebrated venue for the tournament, which unfortunately remains next-to-dead the rest of the year. Crowds of fans pour in, often wearing tee shirts with Pakistan cricket team logos on them. They’re seen carrying placards with a variety of slogans, and cheering their favourite teams and players out there in the ground.

The opening ceremony, worth a million bucks, is marked by fireworks display, song and dance acts by leading pop artists of the country and so on.

This year’s event is no different, not even when you consider the grouses shared by spectators and fans which are basically the same every year, be those to do with the rather off-putting layers of security as you approach the stadium, or the poor management, or irregularities in ticket sales. But by and large, PSL is a success.