Pindi groundstaff's painstaking efforts bear fruit in gloomy weather.

Byline: Khalid H. Khan

RAWALPINDI -- The Rawalpindi leg of the HBL Pakistan Super League 2020 was an unqualified success in terms of attendance with the Pindi Cricket Stadium providing a great spectacle throughout thanks to bumper crowds thronging through the turnstiles during the seven matches which took place.

But its conclusion almost met with catastrophe when the final fixture here between Islamabad United and Multan Sultans was perilously close to be abandoned following the spate of rain that dogged the majority of the matches staged in this garrison town.

According to reliable sources Sunday's nine-over-per-side game would have never taken place at all due to the severely-drenched conditions of the outfield. But the outstanding groundstaff yet again put in huge efforts to make the arena somehow playable.

The lengthy delay to the match - which was officially slated to begin at 2:00pm - was caused by presence of wet patches spread out at various spots, which needed non-stop remedial measures, carried out by head curator Mohammad Ashraf and his team, before umpires were satisfied that the game could start at 4:15pm - exactly two-and-a-quarter hours behind schedule.

When contacted by Dawn on Monday afternoon, Ashraf confirmed that he and his staff were prepared for the worst possible scenario panning out.

'The writing was clearly on the wall when we reported at the ground in the early hours of Sunday. The conditions we saw put all of us in a state of depression, and the reason was very obvious because we didn't have the required equipment to dry out the outfield,' Ashraf revealed. 'The rains we had during the period [of the matches here] left the outfield inundated. The situation yesterday [Sunday] was so bad that we were ready to give all hopes of holding the game because the water just beneath had filled up to the top of the surface.

'One must understand that unless the sun comes out for long hours during the day, there is no chance of being blessed with a dry outfield. The weather here [in Rawalpindi] is still cold and wet. And throughout the duration [of PSL], the groundstaff had a huge fight to win in combatting the harsh conditions.

'How we managed to minimise the damage is nothing short of a miracle because one cannot fight the nature and when there is so much rain around nobody can do anything but keep hoping for the best.' Luckily, only one match [Islamabad United vs Peshawar Zalmi on Feb 29 - the solitary fixture in this PSL to...