Sisters who broke boundaries for women’s cricket in Pakistan

Sharmeen Khan with her sister Shazia Khan. (Pakistan Cricket)

A famous poet from Pakistan, Fahmida Riaz, known for her unabashed poetry and questioning the patriarchal conduct puts beautifully the actual character of a free woman.

The poetry, which is in Urdu, could be translated as…

Under the singing watch of a rocky mountain, a woman is laughing.

No fame, no money but bold with the guts of a free body:

a woman is laughing.

A country that glorified ‘Pardah’ culture back in the 1980s, wasn’t braced for two women who were plotting a great escape of their gender lineage. Shaiza Khan and Sharmeen Khan, two siblings made nightingales sing through the corridors of Pakistan Cricket Board habituated by eagle nests.

There was something unapologetic about the Khan sisters. Hair ceding right below the ears, cigarette smoke creating waves both in the humid air and an orthodox society, challenging the stereotypes and walking like bureaucracy itself owes them the taxes. Fittingly Pakistan wasn’t a place for women who laugh keeping their guard off.

They grew up in the United Kingdom and with schooling, the love for cricket mushroomed. Little did the game know that Karachi’s wealthy carpet merchant’s kids would lay the red carpet for the generations of Pakistani women embossed with Women’s Wing suffixed to PCB in the years to come.

Pakistani-British novelist and columnist Kamila Shamsie describe the 1980s as “the worst period to be a woman in Pakistan”.

“Torches of Freedom” was a standout movement that encouraged women to exploit their aspirations for a better life during the early twentieth century in the United States. But the enlightenment for the Khan sisters hit when Benazir Bhutto challenged the norms and rose to the echelons of Pakistan’s political landscape to become the first woman Prime minister in 1988.

Enticed by the World Cup Final at Lord’s in 1993, Shaiza and Sharmeen, aged 24 and 21 respectively, decided to try and form a team in Pakistan.

The sisters returned to their homeland with a dream of forging their life via cricket. But they were up against a culture that had affiliated masculinity to cricket. Shaiza and Sharmeen were about to create hullabaloo by challenging the taboo. Until then Women’s cricket was viewed as a mere corporate social responsibility with full-course meals for men and just a welcome drink for women.

“It was not a PCB’s policy; PCB’s policy should’ve been the guardian of cricket. They should’ve been encouraging – even if the kids were playing on the street, they should’ve been the guardians of those people, right? But they were the biggest obstacles we had, and it was personal grudges. These were their complexes or whatever, I don’t know, they know better,” Shaiza had said in an interview.

The Khan sisters decided to swim against the tide. With an air of nonchalance, they decided to form a Pakistan Women’s cricket team. Their father dared to become prodigal in return for providing a 22-yard strip, a practice ground, and a dock house to stay for the harbingers of women’s cricket.

Continuing was no great achievement of ours;

This was a journey where lingering was impossible

The sisters stirred the hornet’s nest as they announced the match against the former men’s cricket team in Karachi. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s rise does give them the guts but her conundrum with the patriarchal society rubbed off on sisters. Before the game, there were death threats given by the opposition party.

“The fundamentalists, they did not agree with what we were doing. They thought it was un-Islamic. And it was in all newspapers that they were going to storm my house. So, my father, he said you better call off this game. And you better play it between two women’s sides, which we did,” said Shaiza.

‘Tu hai Bhutto ki Nishani (You are the legacy of Bhutto),” was a line from Benazir’s campaign song. And the Khan sisters carried the same thought on a sunny afternoon in Karachi. The stadium echoed the sound of leather hitting the wood and outside, riots beckoned with foot-thumping sounds from the cobbled streets of Karachi.

Something which we think is impossible now is not impossible in another decade

Shaiza and Sharmeen had returned to the UK, Bhutto’s government was brought down and the 1997 ODI World Cup was a dream that seemed afar.

Thanks to some newspaper ads and assurance from the Khan sisters, a team was formed under the name of Pakistan Women Cricket Control Association (PWCCA). The then Pakistan’s Sports Minister Anita Ghulam Ali gave clearance and the women travelled to New Zealand and Australia for a three-match ODI series.

The tour held much significance as an ODI World Cup 1997 berth demanded any budding team to have played at least three matches against an already recognized team. But the biggest roadblock awaited them in Pakistan itself.

“Meanwhile, the Pakistan Women’s Cricket Association (PWCA, which was founded in 1978 before PWCCA), which had been operating before Shaiza’s PWCCA, tried everything to disrupt the team’s tours so that they couldn’t travel outside of Karachi.

Shaiza’s team travelled in smaller groups, packed their kit bags in carton boxes, disguised their officials as civilians, and only put on their official dress code upon reaching Melbourne airport,” said Editor, Afia Aslam.

PWCA, which had not organised a single women’s game before Shaiza and Sharmeen’s PWCCA, played a Cinderella’s stepmother and claimed the right to field their own team in the 1997 World Cup. PCB appeared to be the decider as the fire kept on spitting the plasma out. PCB Chairman, Majeed Khan, quashed all the rights of PWCCA and the sisters decided to go rogue.

PWCA had put Shaiza and Sharmeen’s team into the Exit Control List (ECL), the move to ban their travel to India for the 1997 World Cup.

If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun

Due to poor government management, the list only made it to the Lahore airport. Shaiza was sure there was still a way to get out of Karachi. Worried that the visas from the Indian High Commission office in Islamabad wouldn’t arrive on time, she headed to the national capital while the rest of the team hightailed it to Karachi.

Pakistan’s newly formed women’s sodality managed to flap their wings hard and take the leap over the barbed wires that guarded their wintering grounds outside Pakistan. Though they lost five out of as many games in the 1977 World Cup, Brijmohan Lall Munjal, the founder of Hero MotoCorp and principal sponsor of the 1997 World Cup, summed it up as the courage Khan sisters and the team possessed. He ushered his applause by saying that…

“Pakistan have won the World Cup just by turning up here.”