History or Heritage?

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It felt like walking back in time as I made my way past the huge shisham and peepal trees, each more than a century old. The birthplace of Test cricket in Pakistan, the near-forgotten Bagh-e-Jinnah ground awaited me. It was here that the Maharaja of Patiala used to play against Lahore Gymkhana teams in the early part of the previous century.

Douglas Jardine, Lala Amarnath, Keith Miller, Wesley Hall, Fazal Mahmood are just a few of the names I could think of at that moment -- men who've played some of their best cricket out here. Laid out in a north-south direction so that so that the sun wouldn't blind the players, the pitch told me that this place had more in store. Little did I know.

Revered by many great cricketers as the Mecca of Pakistan cricket, the Bagh-e-Jinnah has been witness to some fantastic cricket. It has seen the finest cricketers from the pre-partition era join hands to take on the best of the rest.

Vijay Merchant led India for the first time in an unofficial test here. It was on this very ground that Pakistan's Imtiaz Ahmed became the first wicket-keeper batsman to score a test double century. And the three W's of West Indian cricket; Weekes, Worrell and Walcott had stood as non-strikers, one after the other, witness to an epic battle between Sir Gary Sobers and Fazal Mahmood.

A huge six hit by Keith Miller had once struck the pavilion clock and broken it. But as the Gaddafi stadium (old-timers call it the Qaddafi) came up on Ferozepur Road in 1959, this venue slowly lost its place. All that remained now was just a piece of history. Some of it hitherto unknown.

As I walked into the pavilion, signs of neglect stared hard at me. This wasn't the place it used to be. And what struck my notice immediately was the Cricket Museum. A handful of die-hard cricket lovers had put together something that even money couldn't have possibly done.

A superb collection of photographs and cricket memorabilia. Within moments, I was under the spell, the black and white photos transporting me to a completely forgotten era; a time when they played the gentleman's game in its truest sense.

The towering Mohammad Nisar standing shyly in front of the camera, a crowd that might have been more than the aggregate attendance at the Lahore and Faisalabad tests, standing up to applaud Vinoo Mankad as he led out the Indian team on to the ground in the '55 Lahore test, Miller dancing down the track to the spinners, one of the rare pictures of Muhammad Ali Jinnah with cricketers, all captured forever in black and white.

The photographs were stunning and told you what the game was like in those days. Sir Don Bradman's autographed ball, Dr Jahangir Khan's official blazer, a piece of the Lords turf, it is all there.

And as I wondered about the painstaking efforts it might have taken to put all these in place, I came across the person behind all this work. The museum curator Najum Latif.

"Jee janab, idhar aaiye (yes sir, come this side)", he said as he showed me a rare picture of the legendary Fazal Mahmood. Indeed, this man was behind the efforts in putting up this wonderful idea that encapsulated and displayed the great game at its heights of glory at the Bagh-e-Jinnah.

A visit to the museum will help you in locating Latif saab, as he is fondly called, as a small boy, running along with Mankad, asking for an autograph, as India took the field against Pakistan in the 3rd test in1955. Perhaps, that's where it all started for him. A well-read man, Latif saab is like a walking encyclopedia of Pakistan cricket. Just before he passed away, the legendary Fazal Mahmood had come to the Bagh-e-Jinnah to play at a re-union. And as fate would have it, our dear curator saab had the privilege of facing Mahmood's last ever delivery.

I came out of the museum, mesmerized by what I saw and heard. An education I would never have had just sitting inside a stadium to cover a match. In this age of half-baked cricket journos who thrive on quotes and bytes as their medium requires, this was a wonderful experience that certainly made me more interested in the history of the great game.

So the next time you are in Lahore, ask your cabbie to take you the Upper Mall, Shahra-e-Quaid-e-Azam. Or simply say Bagh-e-Jinnah. And do ask for Latif saab. My next stop is Ghari Shahu, on Allama Iqbal road. Watch this space.