Cricket in Pakistan: Nation, Identity, and Politics

This book seeks to provide unique insights into the social, cultural, and political changes that Pakistan has experienced since its birth in 1947.

These changes are examined through an analysis of Pakistan cricket and its changing contours with the premise that Pakistan cricket (including the cricketers, administrators, fans, and the nature of Pakistan cricket) is a reflection of society itself and that issues such as match-fixing, religiosity, and cricketing innovation are indicative of wider societal trends in politics, religion, and corruption.

Simultaneously, cricket has also affected politics, economics, and society in Pakistan. The book examines how profoundly cricket in Pakistan influences culture, politics, and society and how it is in turn influenced by the wider social and political context within which it is embedded.

An analysis of cricket, therefore, allows a unique insight into wider societal trends in politics and international relations, race, religion, corruption, cultural change, and globalization.

About the author

Ali Khan

Ali Khan is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS. He is also the Dean of the School. His research interests vary from labour issues to popular culture in Pakistan focusing particularly on cinema and sports.

Ali Khan's book Representing Children: Power, Policy and the Discourse on Child Labour in the Football Manufacturing Industry of Pakistan was published in 2007 by Oxford University Press. He was also the General Editor for a series of seven books on Sociology and Anthropology in Pakistan. Two major pieces of research resulted in co-authored and edited books on cricket - Cricket Cauldron (I.B.Tauris, 2013) – and Pakistani cinema – Cinema and Society (Oxford University Press, 2016). A second edited collection on cinema – Film and Cinephilia - came out in 2020. His latest monograph, Cricket in Pakistan: Nation, Identity and Politics was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. Ali Khan has an MPhil and a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in England.

About the chair

Christophe Jaffrelot

Christophe Jaffrelot is Avantha Chair and Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King's India Institute and also the Research Lead for the Global Institutes, King’s College London. He teaches South Asian politics and history at Sciences Po, Paris and is an Overseas Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was Director of Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI) at Sciences Po, between 2000 and 2008.

About the discussants

Mohammad Waseem

Mohammad Waseem is Professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. Formerly a Fulbright fellow at Columbia and the Brookings Institution, and Pakistan chair at St Antony's College, Oxford, he specialises in Pakistan's ethnic, constitutional, electoral, sectarian, military and militant politics. His books include Politics and the State in Pakistan and Democratization in Pakistan.

Rajdeep Sardesai

Rajdeep Sardesai is an Indian news anchor, reporter, journalist and author. He was a consulting editor and an anchor of India Today Television. He was the Editor-in-Chief of Global Broadcast News that included CNN-IBN, IBN7 and IBN-Lokmat, before resigning in July 2014.