Tragedies cast shadow as Australia make poignant return to Pakistan

When it began, this day was supposed to be one of uplift. Australia’s return to cricket in Pakistan after 24 long years. The Rawalpindi Stadium outside Islamabad. A full crowd coming in to see a touring team go from abstraction to reality. Something historical, something to mark. It was a Friday, the centre of Muslim prayer, with an extended lunch break giving a spiritual heart to the day. There was poignancy, too, marking the loss of Rod Marsh. His death fitted our rough calculus of life: 74 years lived, younger than many, but a good life behind him with many misadventures survived.

So the lifting of the spirits remained. There was something of the circle of life and death, of fond farewells in one direction while something new begins. It built up through the afternoon, as the crowds flowed in after prayers to see their opening stand flow past 100, then their next pair do the same. A century for Imam-ul-Haq, someone tied to history for better or for worse thanks to his uncle, Inzamam. The past spoke through the present, even as Pakistan looked to move beyond its past.

The news came through: a bomb, a mosque in Peshawar, sectarian violence aimed at the Shia minority. A count of 30 dead with more to come. And at the same time, for anyone driving through Islamabad, it is an ordinary city, a pretty place with students and coffee shops and street markets bounded by mountains, no place of terror. As some who lived there said, the world is full of horrors and beauty. The first do not belong only to our country, the second we have too.

You try to hold on to the uplift, then. It’s easier when looking over a teeming stadium, at thousands of people in the ranked seating cheering themselves hoarse at every delivery, blowing their