KARACHI: Thousands of policemen will be on duty at Pakistan’s seaside metropolis of Karachi as the last eight matches of the Pakistan Super League's (PSL) 2019 edition kick off in the city on Saturday, police said on Friday.
Given security fears, the first 26 matches of Pakistan’s national cricket league were played in the United Arab Emirates and the last eight, between March 9 and 17, were planned for Lahore and Karachi. But the matches in Lahore, which is near the border with India, were also moved to Karachi after soaring tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors last month sparked fears of an all-out war.
Around 40 foreign players arrived in Karachi on Friday for the six-team competition.
International teams had largely refused to play in Pakistan since a terrorist ambush of the Sri Lankan team in 2009, in which eight people were killed but the national league tournament is seen as a turning-point.
“Around 13,000 policemen, including hundreds of senior officers, will be in the field to ensure a peaceful environment and the safety of people,” Karachi Police Chief Dr. Amir Shaikh told Arab News. “Of these 13,000 cops, 700 are policewomen who will ensure that families coming to watch cricket matches are treated properly.”
Shaikh said 2,500 Rangers guards and hundreds of soldiers from the Frontier Constabulary would also be on duty as part of security arrangements made several months ago. ‘Combing operations’ to identify and neutralize security threats in Karachi had been underway for three months, he said.
“Three hundred CCTV cameras have been installed in and around the [Karachi] National Stadium with a central monitoring desk set up where every movement will be minutely observed,” the police chief said.
In its first year, the PSL competition was played entirely in the United Arab Emirates, but its second edition last year saw two playoffs in Pakistan.
A spokesman for the Pakistan Cricket Board, Sami-Ul-Hasan, said the city’s national stadium had been fully revamped to host the last eight games of the national league tournament and tight security arrangements would be in place for the matches but “without keeping citizens from enjoying the game.”
Karachi’s national stadium has a capacity of around 32,000 people and is not large enough to accommodate crickets fans in a city of 16 million people. Arrangements have thus been made to live-stream matches in ten major parks of Karachi, city commissioner Karachi Iftikhar Shallwani said.
