Cricket
Cricket is the most popular sport in Pakistan. Almost all districts and neighborhoods in Pakistan have a cricket team and people start playing from a young age. Pakistan has won international cricket events, which include the 1992 Cricket World Cup and the 2009 ICC World Twenty20, besides finishing as runner-up in the 1999 Cricket World Cup and the 2007 ICC World Twenty20. Pakistan's cricket teams take part in domestic competitions such as the ABN AMRO Cup, the ABN-AMRO Patron's Trophy, ABN-AMRO Twenty-20 Cup, and the ABN-AMRO Champions Trophy. International test and one-day matches are played between the Pakistan national cricket team and foreign opponents regularly. The Pakistan Cricket Board controls both the men's and women's games. Women's cricket is also very popular, with Kiran Baluch holding the current record of the highest score in a women's test match with her 242. Notable cricketers from Pakistan include Aaqib Javed, Ramiz Raja, Shoaib Akhtar, Younis Khan, Saqlain Mushtaq, Mushtaq Ahmad, Abdul Qadir, Wasim Akram, Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, Saeed Anwar, Muhammad Yousaf, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Waqar Younis, Shahid Afridi, Muhammad Brothers (Hanif, Shohaib, Wazhir, etc.), and Imran Khan. Imran Khan is turned to politics, married to Jemima Khan is named in ICC Cricket Hall of Fame Akmal Brother(umar,adnan, kamran),Shoaib Malik, Imran Nazir, HAris sohail, Anwar Ali >Junaid khan.Nasir Jamshed, Rana Naveed, Azhar ali, Whab Riaz, umar Gul, Saeed Ajmal Saeed Anwar 194 runs against Indian cricket team held the record of most runs by a batsman for 11 years, until Indian Batsman Sachin Tendulkar broke that record by making 200 against South Africa in 2010,And then verinder sehwag broke that record against west indies, Shoaib Akhtar holds the record of delivering the fastest bowl in history of cricket, Shahid Afridi holds numerous record i.e. Fastest Century in ODIs, Wasim Akram on the time of retirement had most wickets in ODIs, Muhammad Yousuf scored most Test runs in the calendar year. Although Pakistan cricket team has also been criticized because of many controversies, many of its cricketers are heard to be always in conflict with each other or with the board. Several of these cricketers declare there retirement from cricket because of these controversies but call-off their retirement after sometime. Pakistan cricket team's fast bowlers are often criticized for practicing ball tempering, which is illegal in cricket. the cricket team has also been in many cases of match fixing and spot fixing.
Read more about this topic: Sport In Pakistan
Famous quotes containing the word cricket:
“All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)