sports of karachi

sports of karachi

Cricket is the most popular sport of the city and is usually played in many small grounds around the city. Gully cricket is played in the narrow by-lanes of the city. Nighttime cricket, popularly called 'night match', can be seen at weekends when people play brightly lit, late night matches on less traversed city streets and the game continues till dawn. Karachi has one world-class cricket stadium, named National Stadium. The National Stadium became Karachi's fifth and Pakistan's 11th first-class ground. The inaugural first-class match was played at NSK between Pakistan and India on April 21–24, 1955. In 34 Tests between that first match and December 2000, Pakistan won 17 and were never beaten. Their only Test defeat on the ground came in the gloom against England in 2000-01. Since then, major terrorist activity, mainly bombings, have meant that non-Asian sides have refused to play in the city, and in five years only Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have visited.
The first ODI at the National Stadium was against West Indies on November 21, 1980, and it went down to the last ball as Gordon Greenidge drove Imran Khan imperiously to the cover boundary with three needed. It has been a far less successful limited-overs venue, with defeats outnumbering victories. In fact, in a little under five years from the start of 1996, Pakistan failed to win on the ground. It also staged a quarter-final match in the 1996-97 World Cup.