Back alley cricket

LAHORE, PAKISTAN — The outside world seems to have agreed that Pakistan is now “the most dangerous place on Earth” (see the Economist, Newsweek, and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign). But despite a daily news digest of suicide bombings, assassinations and regular deadly clashes between religious extremists and the military, most of the country’s 160 million people are still trying to simply get on with their lives.

In the old quarters of Lahore, the capital of Pakistan’s Punjab region, that means cricket bats still come out, and space is made for a pick-up game of the country’s favorite sport.

Cricket is Pakistan’s secular religion. It’s the sport that has brought the country glory — the 1992 World Cup win over England ranks with national independence in the collective memory — and more recently, acute heartbreak when the national team was ignominiously bounced from last year’s cricket World Cup by Ireland (Ireland!). Across Pakistan, angry fans burned some of the players in effigy.

But the beauty of the game is the joy it brings to those who play it in back alleys and parking lots and roadside gullies — wherever there’s space to bowl and bat. Lahore’s heavy traffic has a hard time penetrating the back alleys of the old quarter, and after dark in the warrens of this ancient city, metal wickets get set up and spin bowlers show off their best stuff to the rest of the neighborhood.

Unlike the dimly lit lanes nearby, Noor Street is ablaze under a single street lamp. It’s perfect for night cricket, even if an errant shot can occasionally knock out the kunda, the illegally wired electricity that then requires a little improvised re-wiring.

Here they play for fun and bragging rights. They play as the market stalls come down and the barbers shave their last beards of the day. And they play right through the muezzin’s last call to prayer, his song blending with the pop of bat against ball, and into the shouts of joy that echo off the walls of the alley.