Balls of fury

White on Green: Celebrating the Drama of Pakistan Cricket. By Richard Heller and Peter Oborne. Simon & Schuster; 354 pages; £20.

SPORT does not just provide a window into countries; it helps shape them. In Pakistan, cricket and politics have always been intertwined. In the nation’s first Test, in 1952, they were led by Abdul Kardar, who had previously played for India—a small legacy of partition.

Ever since, cricket has been “a bridge to understanding the collective subconscious of Pakistan”. So argue Richard Heller and Peter Oborne in “White on Green”. The book is really an anthology of the best moments in Pakistani cricket. Often these resonate way beyond the pitch. During partition in 1947, Abdul Aziz Durani, a cricket coach, fled to Karachi, leaving his 12-year-old son with relatives in India. The boy would go on to play 29 Tests for India, but would barely see his father, who became one of Pakistan’s best-regarded coaches.

Very different is the tale of Dr A.Q. Khan, who gave Pakistan its first nuclear bomb, sold nuclear secrets to North Korea and is a patron of domestic cricket. Misbah-ul-Haq, the current captain, played 19 first-class matches for Khan Research Laboratories, the side Mr Khan helped found.

The tensions between the competing visions for Pakistan as a secular nation and a Muslim one have also played out through cricket. The three founding fathers of Pakistan cricket were a Christian, a Parsi and a Muslim, in keeping with Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan as a secular state. Three Christians played for Pakistan in the 1950s. But at times—particularly under the captaincy of Inzamam-ul-Haq in the mid-2000s, who led team prayers as the influence of the revivalist Islamic movement Tableeghi-Jamaat spread within the side—Pakistani cricket has seemed anything but secular.

At every turn, the authors’ warmth for Pakistan and its cricket shines through. They recount stories about many of the sport’s biggest figures (even General Pervez Musharraf is interviewed about his involvement), but the book is best when finding unlikely heroes. Foremost among these are the Khan sisters of Karachi, “Pakistan’s cricketing suffragettes”, who ignored death threats to form Pakistan’s first international women’s cricket team. The squad took part in the 1997 Women’s World Cup only after the side managed to defy the Pakistan Cricket Board’s ban on them leaving the country. Such opposition would be unimaginable today: the women’s squad receive contracts from the Board, enjoy mainstream support in the country and, for all their continued challenges, have become a symbol of female empowerment in Pakistan.