Cricket nights
Not only does night cricket provide a healthy escape for the common Lahori, it also contributes significantly to the roster of young talent
By Ali Umair Chaudhry
Before the likes of Javed Miandad and Zaheer Abbas lofted sixes over the boundary ropes around the globe, they were ordinary men who had to master the patchy gullies and the stiff grass in the vacant plots of their neighbourhoods -- that was once a harsh reality of Pakistan cricket.

A transparent probe into the deaths of patients because they were not attended during the young doctors’ strike in public hospitals, is going to be a test of provincial government to fix the responsibility in compliance with the orders of the Lahore High Court.

The Lahore High Court Chief Justice Ijaz Ahmad Chaudhry, while giving remarks during proceedings on April 7, ordered Chief Secretary Punjab, to form an inquiry commission to fix responsibility for the deaths of patients during young doctors’ strike that paralysed healthcare in public sector hospitals and submit inquiry report within 15 days.

However, the Punjab government is yet to form the inquiry commission even after a lapse of more than a week and seems unlikely to complete the inquiry report within the timeframe.

Talking to TNS, Chief Secretary Punjab Nasir Mahmood Khosa said that the government had not constituted inquiry commission because the written order of the Lahore High Court has not been received so far. However, he said that the timeframe of 15 days set by the Lahore High Court to submit inquiry report would be considered after receiving the court’s written order in this regard. He further said that the government would consider the option of inclusion of relatives of the deceased patients in the inquiry commission after seeing the court’s written order in this regard.

The situation got out of hands due to government’s failure to fulfill its frequent promises especially the one made by the Chief Minister Punjab, Mian Shahbaz Sharif during a meeting with the representative delegation of Young Doctors Association (YDA) on January 15, 2011, to resolve the issue of increase in salaries of young doctors "within weeks not months". After this commitment, the YDA cancelled its planned strike and protest demonstrations on February 15, but the matter lingered on despite series of meetings between young doctors and committees formed from time to time to resolve the issue.

The cash-starved Finance Department’s constraint to generate sufficient funds amounting to Rs 36 billion for 21,000 doctors, 17,000 nurses and 35,000 paramedics became a stumbling block every time in the success of negotiations between the government and the young doctors. However, the YDA, being only concerned for doctors, claimed that the government only needed to spare Rs 15.5 billion for a special pay package for all categories of doctors from house officers to professors in the province.

The striking doctors claimed that government assigned duties to the dispensers to perform duties in the emergencies, which had caused deaths and life-long diseases and disabilities to the patients. Secretary Health Fawad Hasan Fawad remained at the centre of controversy as both senior and junior doctors blamed him for mishandling the issue and misbehaving with the senior doctors. Later, Lahore High Court also reprimanded Secretary Health for failing to restore healthcare in the hospitals.

Ultimately, Chief Minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif agreed to meet YDA representatives and withdraw terminations as the latter also reciprocated by calling off their strike on the occasion of World Health Day on 7th April and arrived at a consensus to form a committee comprising three government members Senior Advisor Sardar Zulfiqar Ali Khan Khosa, PML-N Senator Pervaiz Rasheed and Law Minister Rana Sanaullah, three YDA members YDA Chairman from Rawalpindi Dr Haroon, Dr Nasir Abbas from Children’s Hospital and Dr Abu Bakar Gondal from Jinnah Hospital and four senior professors including Prof Dr Asad Aslam Khan, Vice Chancellor of KEMU, Prof Khalid Masood Gondal, Regional Director CPSP, Prof Javed Raza Gardezi, Professor of Surgery from Services Hospital and Prof Zafar H. Tanveer, Professor of Physiology from Rahim Yar Khan, and got the mandate to present mutually agreed recommendations for implementation for pay raise of doctors within 15 days. The committee is expected to present its recommendations on April 24.

The Young Doctors Association invited severe criticism from within their medical fraternity for ruining image of medical profession by inflicting miseries, diseases, disabilities and deaths upon the poor patients without achieving substantial increase in the salaries of all categories of doctors in the province. Punjab government also got the flak for delaying to resolve the matter for the sake of suffering ailing humanity.

The YDA leader Dr Nasir Abbas, while talking to TNS, said that they had presented a charter of demands including job structure, pay raise, pay protection, healthcare entitlement in addition to giving doctors privilege equivalent to DMG officers or vice versa. "The HO should be given Rs 35,000, MO/PG be given Rs 75,000, while additional increase of Rs 80,000 to Senior Registrar, Rs 100,000 to Assistant Professor, Rs 120,000 to Associate Professors and Rs 150,000 to Professors in their existing salaries should be announced," he revealed the demands.

To a question regarding unattended deaths of the patients, he said that there was a need to decipher between routine deaths and those cause due to lack of availability of treatment. "The number of deaths in each hospital should be compared with the corresponding period last year," he suggested and agreed to fix the responsibility in a transparent manner. To another question of tarnishing of image in the public, he said that after the resolution of the issue of special pay package, it would be their (the doctors) responsibility to compensate by providing quality healthcare to the patient and restore the dignity of their profession in the eyes of the masses.

He hoped that deadlock would not occur now and issue would be resolved amicably. Therefore, he said, there will be no chance of strike in hospitals again as government has promised to meet their demands as much as possible. However, he added that the option of protest was always open for them.

The CPSP Regional Director Prof Dr Khalid Masood Gondal, who is also a member in the committee, said that both sides – the government and the young doctors – have presented their recommendations and would now move towards jointly-agreed package for the doctors. "The government seems quite considerate as it is ready to give as much increase in pays as possible to the doctors within its financial resources. He hoped that there would not arise any deadlock and the matter would be solved mutually, adding that the poor patients don’t afford another deadlock, which may result in denying of basic right of healthcare to them.

In third world countries you are fortunate if you are living in a big city because these are the only places with some light – where development funds are spent. But even big cities are divided into at least two sections – residential areas for the rich and the city for the rest of the population.

The flyover at Kalma Chowk started with much fanfare. Work is going on at four ends of the chowk and it is well cordoned off to avert any accident. Traffic too is well-directed here.

In the same city, a few kilometers from here is the Multan Road, the road that connects to Ravi or Bund Road and Thokar that lead traffic out of and into the city. So there is heavy traffic here.

As you step on Multan Road from Scheme Mor, Allama Iqbal Town, the road leading to Yateem Khana Chowk is dug on both sides, that is, on the left and centre. The digging was ten feet wide on both sides and as deep, with no fencing. The trench along the shops was filled late last week.

On the first day it was dug, which was a fortnight back, a car fell into the ditch in the centre of the road. Everybody saw its picture in newspapers the next day lying upside down, wondering if the driver survived.

Why the dug area on this main road has not been fenced, is hard to understand. Traffic is more vulnerable to accidents here as a good number of vehicles on this road are coming in or going out of the city, hence do not commute routinely on this road.

It is equally hard to understand the digging along the road lined with shops dealing in construction material, hardware, woodworks and electrical appliances and then filling the ditch with water. It’s bewildering. All the shops would open everyday. One wonders these shopkeepers must be stuntmen as there seemed to be no way to reach the shops.

Some sewerage work was going on, I learnt and the road is being widened. Fortunately, the ditch before the shops was filled recently after a fortnight but work is going on in the centre of the road. This area must be fenced so that commuters travel on this road in peace.

From Scheme Mor onwards towards Thokar, the road is still awaiting carpeting even after more than two years. Also, there is no greenery here. Nobody sponsors plantation on the divider on this road. Talk to the people who carry out tree plantations in the city and they tell you that there is no chance of survival of plants on this road owing to extreme pollution.

The whole city is full of vehicles so why single out this road as the most polluted. This should rather be the very reason to plant trees and shrubs here. But I am afraid that a drain now being built in the middle of the road underneath the divider, will put an end to any hope for some greenery on Multan Road.

Imagine more than 10km stretch of road without any greenery or park in sight. Yes, there is no park along the Multan Road or even close to it. For that you have to go to Iqbal Town or Samanabad, the areas adjoining Multan Road.

Fortunately, solid waste management is working here and drainage system is above average owing to the fact that it is a highway.

What irks me and those like me who commute on this road, is the authorities’ disregard for commuters’ life on this end of the city. A car fell in the ditch on the first day after the digging in the centre of the road. All that you can see is a barricade at one end placed after that. The sides remain unguarded.

Two different sets of standards on two different roads in the city where development work is going on, makes one think aren’t people on this end of the city equal citizens of the state.

*7th Anual Exhibition of Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics and Graphic Art by Young Artists 2011 opening tomorrow at 5:00pm at Alhamra Arts Council, The Mall. The exhibition will continue till Thu, Apr 28.

*A spiritual commentary on the movie Kung Fu Panda at Hast-o-Neest Centre for Traditional Art & Culture today at 4pm.

*Marxism Day School today: A day full of lectures, discussion, revolutionary poetry and short stories.

*Lahore International Children Film Festival: The Department of Education, Lahore College for Women University, Lahore, is organising Children Film Festival, in collaboration with Little Art on Thursday, April 21 in the University Auditorium from 10:30a.m.–2:30 p.m. Women and children up to age of 12 can attend.

*Weekly Puppet Show for Children at Alhamra Arts Council, The Mall every Sunday at 11am.

CNG wasn’t available to people half of the week because of which they faced much hardship and had to spend far more than they do in routine to commute. Rickshaws were seen asking double the usual fare while those that run on CNG, could not find even petrol in the city.

Public transport was taking short runs, that is, running short of the complete route which made commuting more difficult for the public. To top that, Daewoo halted its service inside the city, compounding the problem further.

The strike was called by the All-Pakistan CNG Association (APCNGA) to protest against the compulsory two-day shut down of gas from April 13 (Wednesday) for an indefinite period but the strike fortunately was over by the end of the day. Still people fared for three days without fuel.

Saira Rasheed, a resident of Garhi Shahu, tells TNS that she had to pay an extra Rs500 to her cab driver on the second day of non availability of transport due to the CNG strike. "The driver refused to take me to the office if I didn’t give him extra money and of course I didn’t have any other option because even the CNG buses were not running. I remember many colleagues faced the same problem that day," she said.

There are hundreds like Faisal and Natasha who were hit hard by this strike in Lahore. The government should take care of the cheaper mode of transport for public, says Haider Pia, a stand manager at Lahore Bus Stand. "Thousands of people were stranded here in the past week as there was no public transport," he says.

"The government is responsible for it. The rulers do not care for the poor," he says, adding, "people are extremely worried and many transporters have been parking their vehicles at the stand, earning no money."

Ghayas Abdullah Paracha, the CNG Association’s chairman said all petrol filling stations also observed strike for one day with the association to show solidarity.

"The government should treat equally the highest tariff and revenue paying sector which uses only six percent of the total gas." They demanded CNG sector should be exempted from gas load shedding.

Majority of the public depends upon CNG because of the higher prices of petrol and diesel. According to the CNG Association’s figures, around 2.5 million vehicles are running on CNG in the province of Punjab only. There are over 2,000 CNG filling stations in Punjab, employing up to 22,000 workers and if the government does not withdraw its load shedding plan, the CNG stations will not be able to pay their bank loans and will shut down permanently. This would only lead to a rise in unemployment in the country, the association threatens.

Sui Northern Gas Pipelines Limited (SNGPL) authorities say that the strike is unnecessary because militants blew up many gas pipelines in Balochistan from where the supply comes, due to which gas supply to the CNG stations were reduced to five-days a week.

"Five years back I spent Rs35, 000 to get a Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) kit fitted in my car. I thought it would be one time investment to allow me to use cheaper fuel and to earn more money for my family," Sajjid Ahmed, 40, a taxi driver who owns a 1000cc Suzuki car tells TNS. Things went well for a couple of years but then CNG load shedding started in the country.

"First it was one day in a week but since last year, it has become two days a week which literally means unavailability of CNG for three days as it takes hours to get gas on the third day," he says. Early this year he decided to run his car on Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG). "I have spent Rs12,000 to get an LPG kit for my vehicle. Many of my friends have also been doing so as we see no future of CNG. We cannot afford doing no business for two days."

Petrol can be another option but he thinks it is too expensive to afford. "Petrol is available at around Rs84 per liter while LPG is available for around Rs100 per kg. My car can travel 13 kilometer per kg on petrol while it travels more than 25 kilometers per kg of LPG," he explains.

The recent fuel crisis in the country has forced many small vehicle owners, especially those who run them for commercial purposes to modify their vehicles to operate on LPG mainly because of unavailability of CNG. Majority of rickshaws including the famous 4-stroke CNG ones in city have already been plying on LPG. "There are more than 65,000 rickshaws in Lahore and around 90 percent of them have LPG kit fitted in them," says Muhammad Younus Zahid, deputy district officer (DDO) environment Lahore. Interestingly, there is not even a single LPG filling station in the city while decanting is illegal, still the practice is very common in the city which can be hazardous. Substandard LPG cylinders and unauthorised filling stations are the main issues.

In market these days LPG cylinder for a rickshaw made by an authorised factory is available at price of Rs1000-1200 while substandard cylinders are available around Rs500. Small vehicle owners and rickshaw drivers are hardly aware of the standards and they mostly go for the cheaper cylinders.

DDO environment says that most of the 6kg cylinders being used in auto-rickshaws are substandard and dangerous for both the rickshaw drivers and the passengers. "The standard thickness of an LPG cylinder should be 3.4mm while thickness of most of the cylinders manufactured by the unregulated factories is not more than 2 mm. The weight of these cylinders is increased by adding compound (a type to bitumen) that costs Rs5 per kg to make it equivalent to the standard quality cylinder," he says that the substandard cylinders do not tolerate any increased pressure and burst in case of collusion or increase in gas pressure.

Mian Shahid Ilyas, owner of Mian Autos who deals in both CNG and LPG kits, says that business of the second one is on the increase these days. "Leave alone rickshaws and motorcycles, people have been coming to us in good number to get their cars converted on LPG." He thinks that LPG is far better fuel than CNG. "It is environment friendly, cheaper, and conversion cost is more than 50 percent less than CNG while if handled properly it is safer as well." He says that government should allow setting up LPG filling stations to promote this cheap and easily available fuel.

Before the likes of Javed Miandad and Zaheer Abbas lofted sixes over the boundary ropes around the globe, they were ordinary men who had to master the patchy gullies and the stiff grass in the vacant plots of their neighbourhoods -- that was once a harsh reality of Pakistan cricket.

Fortunately, things have progressed considerably over the years, provided one has resources for it. Of the tens of millions of young men who actively play the game, only a few hundred step onto a first-class pitch. For others, the closest they can get is a local floodlit ground providing all of the necessities to play a competitive match.

2011 World Cup led to a flurry of activity in the amateur cricket grounds throughout Lahore -- people from all ages and backgrounds started pouring into grounds, playing cricket throughout the stretch of the night.

Model Town can be deemed the hub of Lahore’s night cricket activities, with five cricket grounds offering night games on a daily basis. The grounds boast of facilities, which are not present in some of the other areas, including pavilions and technical assistance.

The booking for night matches in the ground has become increasingly difficult. "Nights are booked almost a fortnight in advance, getting the grounds for a match on particular dates has become considerably competitive since the world cup," says Shabbir, head of the Model Town White’s cricket ground. "The fact that we are doing this without any support from Pakistan Cricket Board, the success we’ve had is quite commendable."

With an influx of multinational companies arranging such events for their employees and workforce, floodlight cricket has become huge. "There is currently a textile group which has booked 15 consecutive nights for cricket matches. In fact, our biggest clients in terms of night matches are from the corporate sector," says Shabbir.

In response to Model Town’s policy of ceasing activities by 12am, companies and cricket enthusiasts looking to play cricket often go to other areas. The most renowned of which is the cricket ground at Khayabaan-e-Amin. It is generally credited amongst the amateur cricket circle as the one providing the best floodlights -- and is increasingly becoming a favourite due to it’s high maintenance.

"You almost get the feeling you are playing abroad. All facilities are available here. The ground is maintained as any other professional ground would be," says Khawaja Tahir, a regular at the venue.

The costs of holding the game in floodlights, however, can keep it off limits to many. Haseeb Pervaiz of the Model Town sports society is quick to analyse the trend comparatively, "Floodlight cricket is not that expensive, a night-match sets you back Rs2,500 to 3,500 per hour, around Rs1000 per person. That is the cost of dining at good restaurant these days."

Despite it’s inability to be practical for the masses, the trait most commendable about this emerging trend is the realisation that one does not need to be a Miandad or Abbas to loft a six over a far-off boundary rope. Not only does night cricket provide a healthy escape for the common Lahori, it also contributes significantly to the roster of young talent to come through the ranks in the near future.

And as Haseeb states, "the summer happens to be the right time to play cricket at such venues as they charge considerably less due to lesser enthusiasts raising their white flags in front of the summer heat."