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Day 2

Match Point

A Tale of Two Teams: Pakistan’s World Cup campaign through Charles Dickens
By Raza Rashid Published: July 10, 2019

So frequently has one Pakistan left for the ‘other’ Pakistan and then come back again.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it
was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
Darkness….we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.”

The famous opening of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities speaks of an era of contrasts and contradictions. In
the year 1775, England and France paradoxically embodied the mirror images of good and bad that define our
everyday lives and everything within them. The words invoke a perpetual struggle, between hope and despair,
darkness and light, everything and nothing. As I stumbled across the passage again last week, I was struck by an
alarming realization that nowhere else was this theme of duality embodied more clearly than within the Pakistan
cricket team and its 2019 World Cup campaign.
Call it the theatrics of a heartbroken fan to draw parallels between pre-revolution French society and the exploits of
a sports team, but so often has the pendulum swung between the sublime and the ridiculous, so frequently has one
Pakistan left for the ‘other’ Pakistan and then come back again; and so many an ode has been written in valorization
and fulmination of this ‘mercuriality,’ that the concept of duality fits rather aptly.
The best of times
Babar Azam’s cover drives: Sachin
Tendulkar had the back-foot punch, Brian
Lara had his famous high back-lift and Virat
Kohli has his magic wrists. Azam has
something they all had, but somehow, he has
made it seem like he is the first one to do it.

Shaheen Afridi’s spell against New Zealand:

the hallowed sight of a green-shirted, 90mph,
swashbuckling left-arm quickie running
through the opposition’s middle order on a
grey English morning – nothing else
compares. Babar Azam plays a shot.
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Shaheen Afridi celebrates after taking the wicket of Ross Taylor.

Haris Sohail’s innings against South Africa: jumpstarting Pakistan’s winning streak was a breakneck 80 runs off 50
balls from a man who was originally overlooked for being a ‘Test match player’.
Wins against New Zealand and England: beating the world number one, tournament favourites, possessors of the
deadliest batting attack in the history of the modern game, and that too on a flat track? A feat only Pakistan could
pull off, bettered only by a near-perfect performance against the Kiwis.
The worst of times

The opening match

against West Indies: footballer
Andrea Pirlo once wrote about
a Champions League final
defeat to Liverpool in Istanbul
in 2005:
“There are always lessons to
be found in the darkest
moments. It’s a moral
obligation to dig deep and find
that little glimmer of hope or
pearl of wisdom. You might
hit upon an elegant phrase that
stays with you and makes the
journey that little bit less
bitter. I’ve tried with Istanbul
and haven’t managed to get
beyond these words: for f***
sake.”

We know Pirlo, we know. Mohammad Hafeez of Pakistan walks after being dismissed against Bangladesh
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Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik being our senior batsmen: well, the less said, the better.
Mitchell Starc’s review against Wahab Riaz: If a single moment decided our fate in the World Cup, this was
perhaps it. Sarfraz Ahmed getting abused: this was the only thing that could have made things worse in wake of
the India game.
The age of foolishness

Short-pitched bowling: constantly pitching it short

against India and Australia was a tactic which bore no
fruit. Just prior to the World Cup, Pakistan played a
five-match bilateral series against England. Boy, did we
make little use of it. Taking the first four matches to
find their length cost Pakistan the Australia game and
ergo, a place in the semi-finals.
Hafeez getting out against New Zealand: Hafeez sees
part-timer. Hafeez tries to hit out. Hafeez gets out. Play
on loop.
Sarfraz giving the tail the strike against Australia: the
thing with net run rate is that everyone knew about it
before the start of the tournament. Some teams adapted,
while others, such as Pakistan, remained indifferent to
the value of wasted or saved runs, wickets, and overs.

Dropping Shadab Khan against Australia: that cost us at

least 30 runs right there.

Sarfraz Ahmed rues a near miss.

The epoch of belief

Ten days of hope: the days following England’s

defeat to Sri Lanka until their win against India were
some of the most memorable in professional sport.
This period included an incredible sequence of
fixtures that saw England lose to Sri Lanka and
Australia, while Pakistan cleared past South Africa,
the undefeated Kiwis and Afghanistan. Suddenly,
the 1992 World Cup comparisons graduated from
Twitter memes and WhatsApp groups to the live
television broadcast. Truly, the (short-lived) epoch of
belief.
The season of incredulity

Ten days of disbelief: paradoxically, the very same

10 days following England’s defeat to Sri Lanka
until their win against India encapsulated a time of
disbelief. Almost a dozen different games were
required to go in Pakistan’s favour, half of which
they weren’t involved in. To even win their own
fixtures, with a team of overweight and
underachieving athletes seemed like wishful
thinking. The task truly defied belief. Haris Sohail of hits a shot for 6.
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The season of light

Azam’s coming of age: this exorcised the demons of

wasted potential that were Umar Akmal and Ahmed
Shehzad. Azam isn’t just a batsman, he is a light at
the end of a tunnel filled with a generation of batting
mediocrity. He is our redemption.
The season of darkness

As William Shakespeare wrote,

“There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at
the flood, leads on to fortune.”

In the 10 days preceding the England-India fixture,

the tide had risen to a crescendo and the flood had
arrived. England’s victory broke the tide and tamed
the flood, virtually spelling an end to Pakistan’s
semi-final hopes.

Man of the match Imad Wasim takes a selfie.

We had everything before us

But after the Afghanistan-Pakistan encounter, one could almost touch the semi-finals. The charge appeared
unstoppable. Preparations for an India-Pakistan showdown at Old Trafford were already underway.
We had nothing before us

Yet, at the same time, we were hopelessly doomed, relying on the tournament’s strongest outfit to lose three or four
matches on the trot. But England triumphed, and their ascension ended Pakistan’s positively Dickensian tale. Or
perhaps it only reaffirmed it.

All photos: Getty

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Day 2

Pakistan’s dangerous melting glaciers and why we should be

concerned
By Rina Saeed Khan Published: June 27, 2019

Shishper glacier, located above

Hassanabad village adjacent to the
Karakoram Highway (KKH) in
Hunza district, has been in the news
lately as it is an unusual glacier –
unlike many other large glaciers in
the region that are melting and
receding, this glacier is
advancing and surging.

The white Passu Glacier located above the KKH. PHOTO: RINA SAEED KHAN

This towering black wall of ice has been pushing forward into Hassanabad and heading towards the
village and the KKH since last July. I visited the glacier this past May and I have to say it was a
fascinating experience to see this river of ice advancing at 3.7 metres per day. I could almost hear it
groan as it inched forward, crackling in the hot sun as
chunks of ice fell off.

The 15km long Shishper Glacier that was

surging until a week ago.

We were warned not to go too close to it. Below the glacier, streams of muddy melt water were
rushing down into the rock strewn nullah (ravine). We were told that behind this impenetrable wall
of ice, there was a glacial lake which had formed with melt water from another nearby glacier that
had retreated.
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Muchowar glacier once ran parallel to Shishper in
the form of a fork that leads to Hassanabad nullah,
but it had retreated four kilometres in the last
decade; some say from rockfall breaking the glacier
bed due to mining in the valley for semi-precious
stones. The surge of the Shishper glacier into the
nullah had blocked the stream water from the
Muchowar glacier, forming a lake. This past
weekend, after temperatures spiked up north, the
lake water finally burst through crevices in
Shishper glacier and was discharged into the
nullah, causing a mini flood that lasted from a
couple of days (June 22-23).

Water melting out of the Ghulkin glacier in Gulmit village

According to Shezad Baig, the assistant director of the Gilgit-Baltistan Disaster Management
Authority (GBDMA), who went up on a helicopter monitoring mission on June 23rd:

“The glacial lake formed at the Shishper Glacier has now completely discharged.”
He said that around 5,000 cusecs of water had been released below the surging glacier in two days.

“Not one house was damaged in Hassanabad village, thanks to the protective walls we had made.
Only parts of the KKH were damaged and now the road link has also been restored.”
The GBDMA had carried out protective work in preparation for a disaster in the village that is
located four kilometres downstream and they say if the retaining walls had not been built then over a
dozen households would have been
affected.

While the possibility of an abrupt

glacial lake outburst flood that might
have caused a serious disaster in the
area has been averted, the GBDMA will
continue to monitor the 15km long
Shishper glacier. The good news for the
people of Hunza is that the glacier
movement itself has also stopped. The
surge of the glacier had slowed down
from 3.7m a day to 0.5m in early June.
Today the GBDMA claims that Shishper
glacier has stopped surging altogether,
hence Hassanabad village and the KKH
are safe – for now.

Visting the lake at the terminus of the Batura glacier

The fact that some glaciers are surging while some are retreating in the same mountain range
(Karakoram Range) has been perplexing many. I asked Muhammad Atif, the deputy director of
Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD). His answer was that glacier dynamics is a complex
phenomenon.
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“Glaciers can surge cyclically – meaning they can grow and then retreat on their own, or they can
even break (the bed rock can break) and now climate change is affecting them. To truly study a
glacier’s health, one would have to do a mass balance study which means climbing up to the
accumulation zone of a glacier and sticking in poles, and coming back each year to measure them,
which is very difficult to do in the Karakoram mountains as our glaciers are located at such high
altitudes that we can’t even reach their accumulation zones.”

With almost 7,253 glaciers located in its high mountain ranges, Pakistan has more glaciers than
anywhere else on Earth outside the polar regions. A new study published last week in the
journal Science Advances states that climate change is ‘eating away Himalayan glaciers at a dramatic
rate’.
The Himalayan glaciers supply around 800 million people with water for irrigation, hydropower and
drinking. But they have been losing almost half a metre of ice each year since the start of this
century, according to the Columbia University researchers who carried out the study. This could
potentially threaten water
supplies across parts of Asia.

As the ice melts, it forms large

glacial lakes, which can
threaten local communities
such as Hassanabad village
with glacier lake outburst
floods. In the short-term,
experts predict more of this
flooding, but less ice in the
glaciers could ultimately lead
to drought in the long term. In
Pakistan, it is estimated that
there are over 3,000 lakes as a
result of melting glaciers
in Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa of which 36 are
considered hazardous.

The lake formed by the Batura glacier on the way to khunjerab pass

The International Green Climate Fund has recently granted $37 million to a new project entitled
Scaling‐up of Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) risk reduction in Northern Pakistan (2018-2022).

The project is being implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and
Pakistan’s Ministry of Climate Change and is now setting up offices in Gilgit and Chitral after a one-
year delay. The project will set up early warning systems and automated weather stations to mitigate
the impact of GLOFs. It will also focus on building small-scale risk reduction infrastructure such as
gabion walls.

The UNDP-Pakistan will be installing equipment like sensors on and around selected glaciers to
monitor the discharge and glacier movement. Sixteen valleys with threatening glaciers will be
selected in G-B and eight in K-P’s mountainous districts. The GBDMA will also be a partner in the
large project.

“We have completed the vulnerability assessment reports on several glaciers for the project and have
recommended the ones showing the most dangerous trends,” Baig told me when I met him in Hunza
in May.
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“We also need to raise community awareness and mobilise the local people.”
He has recommended several glaciers to be part of this project like Passu, Hussaini, Batura, Hoppar,
Hispar, Ghulkin and Khordopin in Gilgit-Baltistan. Khordopin glacier in the remote Shimshal Valley
has also recently been in a ‘surge’ phase.

Last year, a large lake formed when the glacier blocked the Shimshal River. Shishper glacier has also
been selected for the project. According to Baig,
“Shishper is moving because of two reasons. Firstly, it is located on the main Karakoram thrust line
and there is plate movement. Secondly, because of increased snowfall in winter months due to
climate change in the past five years, the glacier deposit is increasing.”
In Pakistan, around 120 glaciers in the country’s north are stable or even growing rapidly, in a
phenomenon called the ‘Karakoram Anomaly’. Two years ago, a team of researchers from Britain’s
Newcastle University attributed the anomaly to a summer ‘vortex’ of cold air over the Karakoram
mountain range. They said this is causing some glaciers in the region to grow.

A recent report on the Hindu-Kush-Himalayan region from the International Centre for Integrated
Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Nepal concurred that the Karakoram and western Himalaya
areas were experiencing increase invariability and a higher probability of snowfall.
But Philippus Wester from ICIMOD, who spearheaded the report, said that while some glaciers
in Pakistan are stable and a few are even gaining ice, they will nonetheless all start to melt in time as
the planet gets hotter with global warming.
(All photos by author)