Exposure to tape ball cricket at a nascent age hinders the development of skill set required to excel at the international arena. Pakistan has an incredibly rich cricketing history. Over the period of last seven decades, it has produced some of the sport’s greatest icons. Just as most South American footballers grow up playing football barefoot on the street, Pakistani cricketers too start the same way. The world’s most popular version of street cricket, the ‘tape-ball’ variation, originated in early 1980’s in Karachi. The tape ball was quickly adopted by cricket enthusiasts all over Pakistan, owing to its affordability and suitability with rough metropolitan conditions. Despite playing a major role in making cricket more accessible to the common man, it is important to understand how it has had a negative overall impact on professional cricket. A tape-ball requires an entirely different technique when compared with formal hard-ball cricket. In tape-ball cricket, a batsman’s choice of shots is limited because of the restricted playing area. The only options are either to slog or block. This explains why Pakistani batsmen can’t seem to play sophisticated cricketing shots like the pull or hook. Also, as bowlers rarely pitch the ball short in the … Continue reading Pakistan cricket’s ‘tape ball’ problem