QUETTA: In the holy month of Ramadan across Pakistan each year, the devout fast by day but at night, they come out on the streets to play cricket.

This year, the provincial capital of Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province has taken this countrywide tradition one step further, as more than 80 teams compete in a grand night tape-ball tournament at Quetta city's famous Ayub Stadium.

Tape-ball cricket is an informal version of the game played using a tennis ball wrapped in electrical tape and invented in Pakistan, one of the world’s most cricket-crazy nations. At the Balochistan series, six matches take place each night, starting at 9pm and going on all the way to 3am, or close to the time for the pre-fast suhoor meal. Each game in the series is five overs with 11 players on the field. The tournament will conclude on the 27th of Ramadan.

“I was at my village in district Kachhi because I prefer to spend the holy month with my family but when I came to know that the Ramadan night tournament has kicked off in Quetta, I came to join my team for the first match here,” Bilawal Rind, who captains the Prince Railway Cricket Club Quetta, told Arab News at Ayub Stadium this week.

Indeed, teams and clubs have arrived for the tournament from all over the province, including Quetta, Kalat, Pishin, Mastung, and Qilla Abdullah District. Rind, 33, an opening batter, said he had traveled all the way from Dhadhar, some 133 kilometers away from Quetta, to take part in the series.

Though Rind has participated in several Ramadan tournaments in Quetta in the last 12 years, he said this year’s contest at Ayub Stadium, which has a capacity of 20,000 spectators, was a “major event” for cricket enthusiasts in Balochistan.

Pakistan’s largest but most impoverished region, Balochistan has long been the site of a low-level insurgency that has kept both national and international cricketing events away.

But in February this year, when the country’s wildly popular domestic Twenty20 cricket league, the Pakistan Super League (PSL), held an exhibition match in Quetta, the event provided a boost to domestic cricket in the province, which players and spectators said was now reflected in the popularity of the ongoing Ramadan tournament.

“Though Pakistan Super League has given a boom to cricket in the entire country, in Balochistan, the youth is attracted and familiar with tape-ball cricket instead of the professional hard-ball game because it's very costly and everyone can't afford it,” said Aziz ur Rehman, 38, a senior tape-ball cricketer from Quetta.

“I am a professional football player, but to entertain the youth, I conduct the Ramadan night cricket tournament for the province's cricket lovers,” Saeed Ahmed, 41, an organizer of the ongoing series, told Arab News.

He said many young players from Balochistan were now being selected in PSL: “That is encouraging our youth toward cricket.”

The last PSL season concluded last month.

“Due to the recent conclusion of the Pakistan Super League in March,” said Maqbool Ahmed, 32, a regular spectator at Ayub Stadium, “the zeal for cricket in every street of Pakistan is fresh.”