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| The 1996 World Cup final was the Gadaffi Stadium’s No. 1 moment |
Calcutta: The self-proclaimed ‘King of Kings’ is dead, lying in the cold in dusty Misrata, but will the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB)’s showpiece facility in Lahore, the Gaddafi Stadium, still retain its name?
No PCB official was available for a comment on Saturday, two days after Muammar Gaddafi’s execution, but former chief executive Arif Ali Khan Abbasi told The Telegraph that the facility must now be given back its old name — Lahore Stadium.
One can’t recall any cricket facility anywhere being named after a controversial leader of another country, no matter how friendly the bilateral relations.
“If you ask me, there was absolutely no reason to change the name in Gaddafi’s honour (in 1974)... Gaddafi had nothing to do with cricket. At least now, better late than never, the facility should get back its old name,” Abbasi said.
Asked if somebody in the rather unsettled PCB would actually take the initiative, Abbasi (also a former Sindh minister and chairman of PIA), replied: “I really don’t know and wouldn’t like to hazard a guess.”
Former captain Abdul Hafeez Kardar was the head of the Board of Control for Cricket in Pakistan, as the PCB was then known, when the facility’s name was changed.
Apparently, that was done to “thank” Gaddafi for publicly endorsing Pakistan’s right to possess nuclear weapons. According to another version, it was to “thank” the Libyan strongman for generous help after a natural calamity.
Whatever, it was a highly unusual move and, now, quite a few in the PCB must be pretty red-faced.
Back then, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was calling the shots in Pakistan, but it’s not clear whether the suggestion came from his (the Prime Minister’s) office.
Built in 1959, the Gaddafi Stadium has hosted 40 Tests (six of them prior to the change in name) and 59 ODIs. The highpoint, clearly, was when it staged the 1996 World Cup final, won by Sri Lanka.
Abbasi, incidentally, oversaw the facility’s refurbishment in the lead-up to that World Cup.
