The ‘departments’ as they were known, began their involvement in Pakistan’s sporting landscape in the years following the country’s independence, and more frequently in the seventies. Players – and later officials – of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) like Abdul Hafeez Kardar were instrumental in encouraging banks and other industries to develop sports teams which could not only nurture talent, but give sports persons a steady source of income after their playing days were over – and in the early years of Pakistani sports, also provide income when matches were infrequent.
Pakistani cricketers and officials who had either played or worked abroad would have been inspired by the systems there which, in addition to paying players for matches, would allow clubs to employ players as well. In Pakistan, with match fees so low from the sports administrative bodies, bringing in large national and private corporations would have been the only way in which sports could see any real rise in the new nation.
An ad for HBL stated: “Not oblivious of the future welfare of their sportsmen, Habib Bank is simultaneously training them in banking practice and procedures so that when they retire from active sports, they will be well equipped for a regular career.”
Hence, industries were absorbing sportspersons into their organisations’ departments after they were done playing, which led to a steady stream of their future workforce being developed.
HBL formed its cricket team in 1975. In an interview with Osman Samiuddin in The Unquiet Ones, the only thing that A.R. Wadiwalla, a senior vice president in the bank who was entrusted with setting up the sports division, asked HBL’s executive director Ameer Siddiqui was that there be no interference in his selection of sportspersons playing for the bank. This was assured.
Sitting in his office at the Habib Bank Plaza, once the tallest building in Asia, Wadiwalla then looked across the road at the Karachi Cotton Exchange, where Miandad Noor Muhammad held the important position of grader, pricing the cotton coming in to be used by textile mills and for export. The other important position that M.N. Muhammad held was in the Karachi City Cricket Association (KCCA), and a boy who was making a name for himself throughout Pakistan was none other than his son, Javed.
Javed Miandad signed on with HBL, and the rest became cricketing history, with HBL becoming a powerhouse of Pakistani cricket. Domestic players would usually travel by train, but Wadiwalla made sure that they would fly to matches, with a much larger daily allowance to boot. Abdul Qadir and Mohsin Khan became a part of the side during the Wadiwalla years, and later on Younus Khan, Shahid Afridi, Umar Gul, and Fakhar Zaman came through its ranks.
United Bank Limited (UBL) and the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) started their own teams, and amongst the banks and other departments, nearly all of Pakistan’s elite cricketers came from departmental cricket. Years of advocacy from players for better pay throughout the 1970s made sure that even if some sports persons could not make it to the highest domain of their sport, they would still remain financially stable. Another added boost to the departments being included was the rapid development of sports infrastructure. UBL, NBP, and the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) all developed grounds and complexes, which are not only used as first-class cricket venues today, but also added to sports facilities in cities like Karachi.
Domestic Revamp: Towards the End of Departmental Cricket
For the 2018-19 Quaid-e-Azam Trophy season, under former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who also served as Patron in Chief of the PCB, Pakistan’s first class circuit was completely revamped by excluding all departments and only having the provinces field cricket teams in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy. Imran’s proposal was to have six provincial teams, with two from Punjab.
Khan had long advocated for an end to departmental cricket in Pakistan, claiming that the top talent in the country did not have the chance to strengthen their skills owing to the large number of players with varying skillsets they had to play against. Khan remained a proponent of bringing an Australian Sheffield Shield-like tournament to Pakistan, which for Australia’s population of 26 million, comprises six teams based in the six Australian states.
Almost instantly and without a fallback for players who were hired by the departments, well over 50% of first-class cricketers in the country saw their livelihoods vanish. While the previous Quaid-e-Azam Trophy structure had 400 cricketers, the new structure in 2018 had the PCB offer contracts to just 192 players, with pay much lower than what the departments offered, and benefits that players received from the departments were gone as well.
2018 was not the first time that departmental teams had been completely scrapped – the tournament is famous for the constant tinkering of its format – but this time, since the voice to end departmental cricket not only came from the man who was prime minister but also the country’s greatest cricketer, entire sports divisions were shut down and players were out of a job. In 1999, Lieutenant-General Tauqir Zia, one of the most powerful men in the country at the time under Musharraf, also announced that departmental cricket would end, and in 2003, the departments were excluded from the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, only to be brought back a few years later.
Following the 2018-19 season, departmental teams were brought back to the fold of Pakistan cricket just last year in the 2023-24 season, though this time under the ‘President’s Cup’, a tournament specifically for departments. 360 cricketers from 18 regional teams were also offered domestic contracts, announced by Junaid Zia, director of domestic cricket operations at PCB, whose father was none other than Tauqir Zia. HBL did not take part, though instead continues to support the Pakistan Super League (PSL).
Constant reworks, drying up of funds, and mismanagement characterise sports in Pakistan, but quite clearly in the country’s history, the time when its sports were absolutely at their peak came precisely because of large investments of both time and management from outside the governing bodies of the sports themselves.
Branding cricket has not changed, but what has changed is where the brands are now investing their money. NBP bought the naming rights for National Stadium Karachi (now named the National Bank Cricket Arena) in 2022 under a 5-year MOU, in a deal that is one of the first of its kind in Pakistani history. Funding for cricket and advertising for sports still exists, but since the end of departmental cricket in the country, no money has directly gone to player development outside of tournaments like the PSL, or small one-off tournaments that people lose all memory of after a few years.
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