Pakistan Cricket's Decade of Exile (2009-2019)

On 3 March 2009, twelve gunmen attacked the convoy carrying the Sri Lankan national cricket team to the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore, where they were due to play the third day of the second Test of the tour. Six Pakistani policemen escorting the convoy and two civilians were killed; six Sri Lankan players, including captain Mahela Jayawardene and vice-captain Kumar Sangakkara, were wounded; the team bus driver, Mehar Mohammad Khalil, drove the vehicle through the gunfire to the safety of the stadium and was later honoured by the Sri Lankan government and the international cricket community for his actions. The attack was the first time international cricketers had been directly targeted by terrorist violence in cricket history. It ended the Sri Lankan tour immediately. It also ended international cricket's willingness to play in Pakistan for what would become a decade.

The longer political background was the deterioration of the Pakistani security situation through the late 2000s. The 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the spread of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan operations from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas into the Punjab and Sindh heartlands, and the 2008 Mumbai attacks (which had been planned and launched from Pakistani territory) had collectively transformed the international perception of Pakistan as a host of major sporting events. The 2009 Lahore attack, by extending the targeting to international cricket directly, made the existing assessment formal: no full member ICC board would send its players to Pakistan, and the upcoming 2011 World Cup co-hosting role that Pakistan had been awarded was rapidly stripped from the country and reassigned to India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

The Pakistan Cricket Board's response to the cessation of bilateral cricket in Pakistan was structured around two propositions. The first was that international cricket needed to continue for the Pakistani team to remain competitive at the highest level. The second was that the only realistic location for that international cricket was the United Arab Emirates, where the existing Sharjah, Dubai and Abu Dhabi venues had hosted Pakistan-related cricket since the 1980s. The PCB negotiated arrangements with the Emirates Cricket Board through 2009 and 2010 under which Pakistan's home international fixtures would be played at UAE venues, with Pakistan formally designated as the home side for scheduling, broadcast revenue and ICC ranking purposes.

The arrangement worked competitively but at substantial commercial and cultural cost. Pakistan continued to win Test series and reach ICC tournament finals through the 2010s, including the 2017 Champions Trophy victory. The financial position of the PCB, however, was substantially worse than it would have been with home cricket: the Emirates venues did not generate equivalent gate revenue to Pakistani venues, the broadcast commercial rights were diminished by the absence of Pakistani crowd atmosphere, and the supporting domestic structure (first-class cricket, age-group cricket, the major Pakistani urban cricket networks) was deprived of the institutional momentum that international cricket at home would have produced. The PCB's senior leadership through this period — including Najam Sethi, Shaharyar Khan and Ehsan Mani — operated under a constant institutional pressure to engineer a return of international cricket to Pakistani soil.

Following the terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team bus in Lahore in March 2009, Pakistan became a pariah in international cricket. No team would tour the country, and Pakistan was forced to play its "home" international matches at neutral venues, primarily in the United Arab Emirates. The Sharjah and Abu Dhabi/Dubai stadiums became Pakistan's surrogate homes.

The impact was devastating on multiple levels. Financially, Pakistan cricket lost hundreds of millions of dollars in gate receipts and local broadcast revenue. Emotionally, Pakistani fans were denied the chance to watch their team play live, eroding the country's cricket culture. Competitively, Pakistan lost the home advantage that comes from playing in familiar conditions in front of supportive crowds. Young Pakistani cricketers grew up without experiencing the atmosphere of international cricket at home.

The return of international cricket was painfully slow. Zimbabwe were the first team to tour Pakistan, in 2015, for a limited-overs series. A World XI visited for three T20Is in 2017. Sri Lanka returned for a limited tour in 2019. The PSL (Pakistan Super League) gradually shifted matches from the UAE to Pakistan. But it wasn't until the early 2020s that regular international cricket returned to Pakistan, with England touring for Tests and T20Is in 2022 — their first visit in 17 years. The decade of exile fundamentally shaped Pakistan cricket's identity and highlighted how security concerns could isolate an entire nation from the sport it loves most.

“We will not send our players to a country where their security cannot be guaranteed.”

“We will continue to play international cricket. We will play it where we can play it. We will return to Pakistan as soon as we are able.”

“The driver who drove our bus through that gunfire saved our lives. We will not forget him.”

“Today is the day cricket has come home. Today is the day we have come back.”

“It has taken us a decade. We have not wasted the decade — we have prepared for this return.”

The progressive return of international cricket to Pakistan from 2015 onwards was the result of sustained PCB diplomatic work, gradual improvement in the Pakistani security situation, and the cumulative confidence-building of successive limited tours. The Zimbabwe tour of May 2015 — the first international tour of Pakistan in six years — was the symbolic breakthrough. The Pakistan Super League's progressive relocation from the Emirates to Pakistani venues from 2017 onwards, beginning with the final and expanding to additional matches in subsequent seasons, established the operational template for international tours. The World XI tour of September 2017, organised by the ICC and the PCB and led by South African captain Faf du Plessis, was the first multi-country international fixture in Pakistan since 2009 and the structural marker of the country's return to mainstream international cricket.

The Sri Lankan return to Pakistan in October 2017, eight years and seven months after the 2009 attack, carried particular symbolic weight. The Sri Lankan board and players were the immediate victims of the attack that had triggered the exile, and ten Sri Lankan players opted out of the tour citing personal security concerns even after the formal arrangements had been made. The squad that did tour, captained by Thisara Perera, played a single T20I in Lahore at the Gaddafi Stadium — the same venue toward which the 2009 convoy had been heading. The match's symbolic resonance, regardless of its sporting significance, was substantial.

The full restoration of international cricket to Pakistani soil came with the Sri Lanka Test series of December 2019, played in Rawalpindi and Karachi. It was Pakistan's first Test series at home in over ten years. Subsequent years have seen progressive normalisation: Bangladesh, South Africa, England (in 2022 after a previous postponement), Australia (2022) and New Zealand have all toured Pakistan in the period since, and the PCB's institutional position is that the exile is formally and operationally over. The 2025 ICC Champions Trophy — hosted in Pakistan with a hybrid component for India's matches in the UAE — was the most prominent international event hosted in Pakistan since the 1996 World Cup.