Karachi hands out lesson in crowd control

The Indians in the crowd, too were looked after and tried matching their hosts in creating an atmosphere. In the Javed Miandad Enclosure, especially, the noise was the most from the Indian contingent. Wearing white t-shirts, the Indian crowd stood out in a sea of Karachiites and had a healthy duel with them. And at the far end, in the Majid Khan enclosure, one saw a glimpse of the goodwill being spoken about. For every shot there was a group of people running around with flag of both India and Pakistan stitched together. It certainly must have gladdened the hearts of the BCCI chief Jagmohan Dalmiya and PCB chairman Shahryar Khan, who looked on with interest at how the crowd was behaving. Dalmiya immediately announced is support for Karachi and said, ‘‘Next time we will play a Test here’’.

Media and the message

But when all and sundry were having a gala time, as usual it was those in the media centre who had a problem. For security reasons all cellphone lines were jammed and that was bad news for most in the media, with those from India — already handicapped by lack of text-message services — suffering the most. So most of the Indian journalists were seen pacing up and down the media centre, just to be able to pass on the latest information from the match.