ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief elaboration of the widespread view of Pakistani society, and relates it to the development of the nation’s cricket culture. In 2011 the historian and former Times correspondent Anatol Lieven published a book called Pakistan: A Hard Country. Consonant with Lieven’s identification of Pakistan as a ‘hard country’, much power rests with non-state actors. The infrastructure of Pakistani cricket was understandably weak during the 1950s and early 60s. The kinship network, so celebrated by historians such as Lieven, was strongly in evidence. First-class cricket in Pakistan was somewhat haphazard in the 1950s. English cricketers and management were wont from the early days of Pakistani Test cricket to regard Pakistani umpires as biased. Allegations of match-fixing in cricket have grown alongside the increased availability of the game on television and the spread of the internet and online betting platforms, accessible from mobile phones.
