Lahoris are known for their passion for eating and cricket. From the lanes of the good old Gowalmandi Food Street to the newer (read more posh) cafés and restaurants in DHA as well as inside the Walled City, you can’t miss the sight of people enjoying a hearty meal. Equally fervently, they would be found indulging a mix of sports to suit their temperament and style — be it pehalwani (wrestling) at the traditional akhara (wrestling pit), or kabaddi, for the middle-class residents of interior city; basketball and golf for the elite; and of course cricket that is played and watched by Lahoris across all social classes.

However, over the past few years, cricket has fallen in grace, so to say, as international cricket teams and players decided not to play in Pakistan, for security reasons, and domestic cricket refused to come of age. On the other hand, all state-level efforts to ‘bring cricket home’ have translated into traffic snarl-ups and life coming to a halt in the city. A recent case in point: the Pakistan-Bangladesh Twenty20 series which concluded last Monday at the Gaddafi Stadium.

Ahead of the tournament, I was visiting a hospital in Gaddafi’s vicinity, where I overheard a doctor telling a patient to get admitted after the matches were over. His warning was: “Even if you are admitted now, I won’t be able to visit you because the city is locked down. All your time and money will be wasted!”

This reminded me of how I was stuck in traffic for close to two hours during one of the October 2019 cricket matches between Sri Lanka and Pakistan, and how not only the commuters but businesses around the venue had been affected. Over 2,000 small and large establishments in the centre of Lahore offer employment to around 10,000 people. These, as well as the few plazas around town, were all near shut down in the event of the cricket tournament, resulting in losses running into millions of rupees per day.

For the commuters, it’s a nightmare to have to take any of the roads close even to the five-star hotel on The Mall where the foreign team members are staying. Buses, cargo vehicles, auto rickshaws of different categories, animal-driven transport, two-wheelers, push carts, and pedestrians all contribute to the mess, as the traffic is diverted, with little or no success. During those fateful days, you would commonly witness a rickshaw being pushed to the next petrol pump as the poor vehicle exhausted its fuel reserves.

A drive around the city revealed that almost all of Gulberg’s MM Alam Road and Main Boulevard leading to Barkat Market had been closed. Reason: these areas were used as car parking spaces for the spectators. People did not have access to these areas from around midday till almost after 9 at night when the stadium would finally be vacated by the teams and crowds.

As I walked the streets near Gaddafi, I stopped to chat with a push-cart vendor selling street food and asked him for his views. With the wisdom of the street he said, “I only have one worry: in a curfew-like situation, what if somebody wanting to disrupt the match or create mischief, cannot reach the target and out of frustration blows himself up someplace else, killing innocent bystanders?

The six large private medical facilities on Ferozepur Road and around Liberty Market/MM Alam Road, one large hospital run by a charity organisation at the Liberty roundabout on Main Boulevard, and even the two major public sector hospitals on Jail Road are approached through the Main Boulevard and Canal Road. Visitors as well as the faculty all face issues, while ambulances are routinely stuck in traffic, and the staff cannot report in time, leaving the patients to suffer.

The lockdown also forces the people who are based and/or work around Gaddafi to either stay at home or leave before the roads are closed and return later at night once the roads are reopened. Anwar Kamal, a senior advocate who lives on one of the roads skirting Gaddafi, says that when people returned home and told the cops posted on the checkposts that they were locals, they were not let in.

Kamal recalls how late one night the police knocked at his door, as they did with other residents, and asked him to sign a surety bond that the particulars provided to them were correct. “The purpose was to not let any stranger come and stay with us,” he adds. “In case we found someone up to something suspicious, we were required to immediately inform the concerned police station.

“The bond also said that in case the signing citizen did not abide by the terms, the police could take legal action against them. It’s farcical, to say the least!” Kamal is contemplating to file a petition against what he calls “this form of aggravation.”

Another resident of the area, Ms Siddiqui comments, “It is ironical that the stadium is guarded but there’s no check on the people loitering about on its periphery. Aren’t they a security hazard?”

Ms Siddiqui and some other residents of the area have now approached the station police officer and demanded permits so that they can get home without going through the barricades.

However, the issue is, how many passes and for whom — just the residents, or their servants as well? What if the permit holders are away from home and their family members have to step out for some errands?

That’s the price that the people of Lahore have to pay, every time cricket comes home. Sure, there is a sense of festivity (or a semblance of it?) for the aficionados of the sport, especially those who manage to reach the enclosures through a variety of checks, but is that compensation enough for the nuisance? Is the game worth all the hassle involved for the security cover?

Indeed, many would say that if Army helicopters can be employed to dry the pitch after a shower, why can they not be used to ferry the teams. Is there no better plan that the government can devise, if it must host a mega international event or, as in this case, a cricket tournament? A workable idea could be to refurbish some hotels closer to Gaddafi and board the teams there.

He blogs at:  www.gsntahir.wordpress.com