Gaddafi Stadium Lahore: History and Records

Almost everything that has happened to Pakistani cricket has happened at, or been decided from, this ground. The board's offices are here. The national academy is next door. The country's first Test after independence was not played here, but a World Cup final was, and a World Cup semi-final, and the highest Test innings ever made by a Pakistan batter, and the attack in March 2009 that shut the country's international cricket down for six years.

It sits in Gulberg III, on Abdul Hafeez Kardar Road, close enough to Ferozepur Road and the Liberty shopping district that on a match day the traffic problem extends for a couple of kilometres in every direction. There is no cricket ground in Pakistan with a longer or more continuous relationship to the national side.

Built in 1959, renamed in the 1970s, rebuilt twice since

The stadium opened in 1959 as Lahore Stadium. It was designed by Nasreddin Murat-Khan, a Russian-born architect who had settled in Pakistan and whose best-known work is Minar-e-Pakistan, and built by Mian Abdul Khaliq and Company.

The renaming came in the 1970s, in honour of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, whose government had been publicly supportive of Pakistan at a moment when Pakistan felt short of friends. The name has outlasted the politics that produced it and every subsequent argument about changing it.

The building most people picture is not Murat-Khan's. Ahead of the 1996 World Cup the ground was substantially redesigned by Nayyar Ali Dada, who wrapped it in hand-laid red brick and Mughal-style arches and replaced the concrete terracing with plastic seating. That facade is what gives the stadium its particular look, closer to a Lahore public building than to a modern bowl. The lower level under the stands was enclosed and let out as shops and offices, which is why the outside of a Test ground doubles as a small commercial strip.

The first Test, and what a Lahore Test used to mean

Test cricket arrived at the ground in November 1959, when Pakistan played Australia there from the 21st to the 26th. For the following three decades, Lahore Tests had a reputation, and it was not entirely flattering: high scores, slow scoring, and a lot of draws. Pakistan's 699 for 5 against India in 1989 is still the highest total made at the ground, and it did not produce a result.

That was partly the surface and partly the era. Pakistan's home Test cricket in the 1970s and 1980s was played on flat, slow pitches in front of large crowds, and the sides were built around batters who could bat for two days and bowlers who could reverse the old ball late. The mechanics of that skill are set out in the guide to how reverse swing developed in Pakistan.

The ground's first one-day international was against England in January 1978, and it was the first venue in Pakistan fitted with modern floodlights and standby generators, which is why so much of the country's early day-night cricket happened in Lahore rather than Karachi.

Two World Cup nights

Lahore has hosted two of the biggest occasions in Pakistani cricket, and lost one of them.

On 4 November 1987 the ground held the first semi-final of the World Cup, Pakistan against Australia. Australia made 267 for 8, Craig McDermott took five for 44, and Pakistan were bowled out for 249 to lose by 18 runs. Pakistan had been strong favourites at home and the defeat is still remembered by people who were there as the loudest silence the ground has produced.

The compensation came nine years later, though not for Pakistan. On 17 March 1996 the World Cup final was played here between Australia and Sri Lanka, and Sri Lanka's chase — built on Aravinda de Silva's unbeaten century — produced the most consequential single result in Asian cricket of that decade. It remains the only men's World Cup final played in Pakistan. The wider context of that tournament sits in the history of the men's 50-over World Cup.

Three days in May 2002

The most extraordinary Test played at the ground lasted three days. Pakistan met New Zealand in the first Test of the 2002 series, beginning on 1 May.

New Zealand batted first and were bowled out for 73. Shoaib Akhtar took six for 11 from 8.2 overs, which is still among the more violent short spells in Test cricket at any venue. Pakistan then made 643, with Inzamam-ul-Haq scoring 329 from 436 balls, 38 fours and nine sixes. It is the highest individual innings in a Test at the ground and the highest by any Pakistan batter anywhere. New Zealand were bowled out again for 246, Danish Kaneria taking five, and Pakistan won by an innings and 324 runs inside three days.

Set against thirty years of Lahore draws, that match is a useful corrective. The pitch here has never been uniformly placid; it has been whatever the ball in hand made of it.

The 2002 series is also a reminder of how completely the ground's fixture list has been shaped by things outside cricket. That tour was itself cut short: New Zealand abandoned it and flew home after a bomb went off outside their hotel in Karachi the following week, so the second Test was never played. Between the mid-1980s and the mid-2010s Lahore's international calendar was interrupted by war in the region, by political tension with India, by security incidents and by the ICC's own scheduling. The ground has staged fewer Tests than its age and importance would suggest, and the gaps are almost never sporting ones.

3 March 2009

On the morning of the third day of a Test against Sri Lanka, gunmen ambushed the convoy carrying the Sri Lanka team to the ground near the Liberty roundabout. Six policemen and two civilians were killed. Five Sri Lankan players, including the captain Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara, were injured, and the reserve umpire Ahsan Raza was seriously wounded in a following vehicle. The team bus driver, Mehar Mohammad Khalil, drove on through the fire and into the stadium, and was subsequently and rightly treated as the person who saved the squad.

The Test was abandoned and the tour ended. So, in effect, did international cricket in Pakistan. Touring sides did not come; Pakistan's home fixtures were relocated to the Gulf; and for six years the ground hosted only domestic cricket. The 2009 side that won the World Twenty20 in England three months later did so as a team without a home, a point covered in the account of Pakistan's 2009 T20 World Cup win.

Zimbabwe, 2015, and the way back

The return began here. Zimbabwe toured in May 2015 and played all five matches — three one-day internationals and two Twenty20s — at Gaddafi Stadium, the first visit by a Test-playing country in six years. Security was extraordinary and the crowds were enormous. A bomb outside the ground during the second one-day international killed a police officer and a civilian; the final match went ahead two days later.

It is easy to be glib about that decision. It was, at minimum, a deliberate judgement by the board and the visiting side that stopping again would have cost Pakistan another decade. The restoration then proceeded ground by ground and format by format, with Test cricket returning later at Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium and the National Stadium in Karachi.

The 117-day rebuild, and the 2025 Champions Trophy

Pakistan's hosting of the 2025 Champions Trophy forced the biggest structural change to the ground since 1996. The board committed to an upgrade in mid-2024 and completed the work in about four months: new imported seating throughout, LED floodlighting, two large replacement screens, rebuilt hospitality boxes and player facilities, and a dry moat separating the crowd from the playing area. Capacity went up from roughly 21,500 to somewhere around 34,000.

The ground then hosted four matches of the tournament, including the second semi-final on 5 March 2025, in which New Zealand made 362 for 6 against South Africa — centuries for Rachin Ravindra and Kane Williamson — and won by 50 runs. Pakistan, hosting a global event at home for the first time since 1996, went out in the group stage.

Detail	Current position
Opened	1959, as Lahore Stadium
Capacity	Around 34,000 after the 2024-25 rebuild
First Test	November 1959, Pakistan v Australia
First ODI	January 1978, Pakistan v England
Highest Test total	Pakistan 699 for 5 v India, 1989
Highest Test innings	Inzamam-ul-Haq 329 v New Zealand, 2002
Also on site	PCB head office and the national academy

What the pitch does

Lahore is a batting ground more often than not. The square is generally true, the ball comes through at a consistent height, and in white-ball cricket totals here run high — 362 in a Champions Trophy semi-final was startling in scale but not in kind.

Two things complicate that. The first is that the surface takes turn as a Test wears, and it takes it slowly rather than sharply, which rewards spinners who bowl a lot of overs rather than those looking for one ball in six to do something. That was the story of the March 2022 Test against Australia, the last of a three-match series: Pakistan, chasing 351, were bowled out for 235, with Nathan Lyon taking five for 83 in a very long spell and Pat Cummins three for 23 with reverse swing. Babar Azam made 55 and Imam-ul-Haq 70 and the rest of the order went. It was Australia's first Test series win in Pakistan since 1998.

The second is the season. Lahore in high summer is brutally hot and the monsoon follows; the cricket calendar therefore concentrates on the cooler months, and an early-season Test can have genuine early movement before the surface flattens out. Dew is a real factor in evening white-ball matches and chasing sides tend to be favoured under lights.

The Qalandars, the academy and going to a match

Domestically, this is Lahore's ground in every sense. Lahore Qalandars play their Pakistan Super League home matches here, and the stadium has staged several finals, including the 2017 decider between Peshawar Zalmi and Quetta Gladiators, which was the first PSL final played in Pakistan and was treated at the time as a national event rather than a franchise fixture. First-class cricket in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy is played here too, usually to small crowds.

The board's headquarters and the national academy sit on the same site, which means the ground is also where central contracts are argued over, selection meetings happen and rehabilitating fast bowlers do their fitness work. Very few Test grounds are simultaneously the sport's national office.

For spectators, tickets for internationals and PSL matches are sold online through the board's ticketing partner and at designated outlets, and they sell out for any Pakistan international or a Qalandars fixture. Security screening is thorough and slow, so arriving well before the start is not optional; restrictions on what can be carried in are strict. The enclosures on the pavilion side give the best view of the pitch, but the noise is on the far side. Comparisons with the country's other major venues, including Multan Cricket Stadium, are collected in the guide to Pakistan's cricket grounds, and the rest of the domestic and international picture is on the cricket in Pakistan hub.

Sources and method

This page is built from the ground's published match records, contemporary reporting of the 1987 semi-final, the 1996 final, the May 2002 Test and the March 2022 Test, PCB announcements covering the 2024-25 redevelopment and the 2025 Champions Trophy schedule, and the documented record of the 3 March 2009 attack. Capacity is given as a rounded figure because the published number has changed with each phase of building work. Pitch behaviour is described from match results and reporting rather than from any dataset of our own, and no figure here has been calculated by us.