Shared Cricket Stadium for Pakistan and India.
A few days back, I was talking to a friend I picked up online, who happens to be an Indian, and as we were discussing some things loosely related to cricket, it hit me.
There’s this whole thing about Pakistan vs India matches. People, adults and teens and kids alike, all gather together some place where the live game is projected on a large screen. There’s something too exciting about this even for those who aren’t into cricket much. There’s this feeling of unity all thanks to this rivalry between the two countries. Note that this rivalry here, that I speak of, is much more of a friendly rivalry, and there’s technically nothing wrong with it, with all those cheeky advertisements and all, it’s all about showing the other country who plays better.
The big idea is that a stadium, funded by both countries, be built, with the consent of the governments of both, where all matches involving Pakistan and India take place (tough but allow me to add “when possible”), preferably those that the two countries play against each other, and people from both the countries could come and watch them together.
This is of course not as easy as it sounds. There’s the problem of security for one. People slipping in and stuff, but this _I trust can be easily seen to. Then there’s the thing about league matches and all where a country or two can’t just choose their own stadium to play in, but come to think of it, there could even be a separate league for Pak Vs India matches that could take place annually and in that stadium, which would be great and fairly exciting and people from all parts of both countries would travel all the way to it because they wont want to miss the events.. In fact, people might actually like to stay for several days while they go on, and guesthouses and hotels could be developed in both countries close to it, and this would only be beneficial to the economies. Then there’s the problem of location. It has to be on a stretch of land that neither country owns, or both the countries contribute exactly an equal amount of “land” _ into this. This of course appears to mean only two things: either we make it in kashmir (that doesn’t sound too bad actually, for that might be quite a sight.), or the center of the stadium lies exactly on the border line at some point, so one might as well say that the border line would divide it into two clean halves. This might need a little reconstruction too.. but this bridge too can be crossed.
Point being, if someone sets about doing it, they’d figure something out, and nothing would actually be a big issue. If done, this could be amazing.