Khelo Kricket: The Night Tournament Changing Girls’ Cricket in Pakistan

“We’ll see if there’s a market there. We posted an ad and within 24 hours we had 250 registrations.”

“I wish I could capture that feeling and bottle it,” she says of the moment she walked onto the ground for the first women’s tournament she played back in 2016.

– We see the girls’ fathers, brothers and mothers who had run their daughters to the ground and were emotional [seeing them play].

“Mums literally cried to me and said ‘thank you for giving our girls a chance.’

“They’ve always had the talent, we’ve always wanted to do it, but we’ve never been able to give the girls a chance.”

The opportunities for female athletes increase against the backdrop of a socially conservative nation.

Depending on location and privilege, women either find more opportunities to play or are prevented from doing so because it is seen as compromising their modesty.

A glance at the composition of the national men’s and women’s cricket teams gives a snapshot of this.

Most of the men’s teams come from socially and economically conservative backgrounds, while the women’s teams tend to come from more affluent families who are much more likely to be liberal enough not to oppose women’s sports.

Obaid, whose own family runs a successful textile business, founded Khelo Cricket in 2015 – first as a website with the aim of covering and promoting men’s grassroots cricket in Pakistan.

Then he branched out, with Khelo hosting his own tournaments. Again, only for men.

“We didn’t even know the market existed [for women]”, he explains.

However, that would change before the holy month of Ramadan in 2016.

The dusk-to-dawn cricket of Ramadan is a cultural staple of Pakistan. Especially in Karachi, every ground and street is reserved so that the races can continue through the night when the fast one is broken.

Kicker is – or was – only for men.

“We weren’t sure if women would be allowed to play cricket at night,” explains Obaid.

“The idea of ​​girls playing cricket from dusk to dawn doesn’t come to mind when you think of Pakistani women. Or any women playing cricket anywhere in the world.”

Nevertheless, Obaid threw out the idea and was rewarded with immediate demand.

“Oh my God,” he recalls, laughing about the flood of applications, “we didn’t prepare for such a big tournament.”

When the action was in full swing, Obaid had to limit the competition to four teams because they only had the land for one night. He also had to deal with the criticism he faced.

“I got a lot of backlash from my first two events,” he explains. “I did them in Ramadan, it was ‘blasphemy’, ‘how can girls play at night’? I don’t care about those things.

“You don’t want your daughter to play? Fine. But don’t tell me other girls don’t want to play because we’re seeing the numbers grow.”

Ramadan provided an opportunity for tournaments to begin, but demand would soon mean it would grow even further.

The initial tournament was held only in Karachi in 2016, but from 2023 onwards, Khelo Cricket will have five tournaments a year involving 10-12 teams across the country.

Matches feature a maximum of 20 rounds per side, some of which are tape ball – the easiest version of the game where a tennis ball is wrapped in electrical tape – and some hard ball. They are all crickets though.

“Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi are probably the ones we’re going to do,” says Obaid.

“We also want to do one in Abbottabad or somewhere in the north because there are a lot of girls who play cricket who message us and say ‘just one tournament, give us a chance to play’.

“It’s great to give girls a safe space to play cricket”

Local women’s academies, helping to grow the game, field many teams, and with prize money offered through competition sponsors, Money won goes back to the academies in a self-styled funding ecosystem.

The tournament has already been on track as 21-year-old Pakistani fast bowler Fatima Sana, who made her debut for her country in 2019, won the player of the tournament in the first competition held.

“When she first played,” Obaid recalls, “I remember looking at her and thinking, this girl is incredible.”

And he was right. In 2022, Sana was selected as the ICC Women’s Emerging Cricketer of the Year.

“I met him when he was 12, so I’ve actually seen him over the years and it’s amazing to see how he got into the circuit board system and where he’s gotten to now.

“The fact that we are able to give girls a platform, a safe space to play cricket is something that I always find amazing.

“And the fact that I’ve given them the fearless ability to play cricket at night once a year and have fun that was only reserved for boys, I think that’s what I’m most proud of.”