LAHORE, Pakistan — At a watch party at an outdoor café last Sunday, Pakistani cricket fans got up and left in exasperation well before the match they were watching was over. It was starting to look like India would win — quashing Pakistan's chances of making it to the finals of the Champions Trophy tournament, which Pakistan is hosting this year. In the final hours of the match, the café crowd of at least 100 mostly young people was subdued. Those who remained till the very end clapped in resignation as India's final batter scored a match-winning 100 runs — a milestone in the sport.
Still, cricket-mad Pakistan has reason to celebrate. The country is hosting a major international tournament for the first time in a generation. It's a much-needed bright spot in a nation that has struggled to recover from overlapping economic and political crises over the past three years.
The International Cricket Council Champions Trophy is an eight-team tournament being played from Feb. 19 until March 9. Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi are among the cities where matches are taking place. The last time Pakistan hosted an international cricket tournament of this caliber was in 1996 for the World Cup, which Sri Lanka won. (Pakistan made it to the quarterfinals that year).
On Thursday, after a rained-out match with Bangladesh, Pakistan finished the Champions Trophy winless.
Team captain Mohammad Rizwan acknowledged the letdown felt around the county. "We thought we were going to play and, God willing, perform well in front of the whole nation," he told cricket commentator Ramiz Raja. "But we didn't perform like that. This is also disappointing for us."
Still, fans are excited to have international teams playing on their home turf. They're also hoping it will give Pakistan a reputational boost so it can host more tournaments like this in the future.
"It's a big step, a big achievement," says 24-year-old Yasir Haseeb, standing outside Lahore's cricket stadium before the Australia-England match last weekend.
"Cricket is like a religion here," his friend Ahmad Shawal, 26, chimes in.
Some Pakistani fans even came from abroad to watch international teams play, including 46-year-old Munawar Hussain, who traveled to Lahore from his base in Dubai. "It's more than a match. It's a celebration, it's a festival here," he says. "I'm happy to see that my people are happy."
A hard-won milestone
Hosting this tournament is a hard-won milestone for Pakistan. In 2009, militants opened fire on Sri Lanka's national team in Lahore, killing eight people — mostly Pakistani policemen. Six Sri Lanka players and a coach were wounded.
Cricket commentator Leena Moin Aziz was inside Lahore's stadium in 2009 when she got word of the attack on the Sri Lankan players' bus. "At that very moment, I knew that cricket was going to disappear from Pakistan," she recalls.
She was also confident that Pakistan would be able to host again someday. "I knew that we were a resilient nation, and we would make sure that cricket would come back," she says.
The attack scared many international cricket teams away for nearly a decade. Zimbabwe was the first team to visit after the attack, in 2015. Sri Lanka's players returned in 2017.
Two years later, visits by international squads became more regular, but there was still some hesitation. New Zealand canceled a visit in 2021, citing security concerns, as did England, which returned for the first time in 2022 after a 17-year hiatus.
It took more than 15 years after the attack for the country to host a major tournament again.
Pakistan competed with 16 other countries for a chance to host International Cricket Council events taking place between 2024 and 2031. It was allocated the Champions Trophy in 2021.
Sami Ul Hasan, director of media and communications for Pakistan's Cricket Board, says getting back in the running for these events "has been a slow, gradual process."
What paved the way was the ICC lending support in 2017 for a group of international all-stars to compete in Pakistan as part of a Cricket World XI tour, he says. That tour required the blessing of ICC security consultants, who were shuttled around in armored vehicles with police escorts to assess Pakistan's preparedness to host the event.
ICC delegations also traveled to Pakistan several times last year ahead of the Champions Trophy. They visited stadiums and met with provincial leaders and police to iron out security plans, which later got the go-ahead from visiting countries' cricket board representatives.
Pakistani officials say this year's tournament is a way to cement its position as a host nation. "It's kind of a confidence-building measure for the world," says Muhammad Faisal Kamran, Lahore's deputy inspector general of police operations.
Around 10,000 police officers have been deployed for tournament security in Lahore, he says. He is personally tasked with accompanying visiting cricket teams everywhere they go. "Actions speak louder than words and we are giving our best in this event," he says.
The tournament comes at an important moment for public morale, too, commentators say. Pakistan is only starting to recover from one of its worst-ever economic crises, which saw levels of inflation that made it difficult for many Pakistanis to afford essentials like flour, medication and school fees.
Pakistan has been embroiled in political controversy since the 2023 imprisonment of former Prime Minster Imran Khan, who remains popular, and a 2024 election that brought his rival party into power amid widespread allegations of vote rigging.
The country also continues to struggle with militancy in two of its provinces bordering Afghanistan, where separatists and extremist groups regularly launch attacks on police, soldiers and civilians. According to the Center for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad, 2024 was the deadliest year in Pakistan in almost a decade, with 2,546 people killed in attacks.
Security concerns have led India to avoid playing in Pakistan
The only team that isn't in Pakistan for the Champions Trophy now is India, which is playing its matches in Dubai, citing security concerns. The Indian national team has not played in Pakistan since 2008, a reflection of the contentious political relationship between the two neighboring countries.
India's no-show was a disappointment for Pakistan's cricket fans, who had to watch the rivalry match last weekend on phone and television screens. And for some, the excitement of hosting the tournament didn't overpower the sting of losing to India.
"I'm a little heartbroken that we lost," says 29-year-old Misbah Noreen, at the Lahore watch party.
She still has some optimism that her team will beat rival India next time.
"We are Pakistani," she says. "We still have that hope."
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