International cricket must return to Pakistan (and my team went first)

In a tiny courtyard just off the teeming alleys of Lahore’s old town, a young Pakistani boy in a gleaming white shalwar kameez picks up his Adidas cricket bat and proceeds to clout to all corners the plastic ball his pal is chucking down. Behind him on the wall the outline of three stumps is drawn, and the word Out! chalked there, more in hope you feel. In the corner a little schoolroom has emptied out and excited young boys and girls, books in hand, look on, giggling happily.

Is this the new Imran? Almost certainly not, but we are in one of the holy places of Pakistan cricket, and in this troubled but vibrant country, only cricket comes close to Islam as a unifying passion. For near this courtyard is the birthplace of one of the legends of world cricket, the great leg spinner Abdul Qadir. The man himself is now nearly 60, and devotes himself to the cricket academy he runs here in Lahore, one of the great seminaries of the sport in Pakistan.