Rooftop nets and box cricket: how Lahore's players are finding space to bat

Ask a young cricketer in Lahore where they play, and the answer is increasingly not a park or a street but a rooftop. Enclosed net and box cricket venues, set up on roofs and empty plots, have become one of the most visible features of urban sport in Pakistan's big cities. A policy-focused piece in The Friday Times on 19 June 2026 explained why.

Squeezed out of the open

The underlying driver is space. The article, written by Usama Abdul Rauf of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, cited figures showing that Lahore's open space shrank from 31.09 square kilometres in 1998 to 15.69 square kilometres by 2018, roughly halving in two decades. It also referred to PIDE research finding that almost 60 per cent of Pakistanis lack access to playgrounds or play areas.

Urban growth adds to the pressure. The 2023 census put Pakistan's urbanisation rate at 38.8 per cent, and the piece noted that urban population growth in Punjab is running faster than the national average. Karachi faces a similar squeeze, with a 2025 study cited in the article finding green space per resident well below the World Health Organization's recommended minimum.

How the venues work

The business model is simple and cheap to start. An operator lays synthetic turf on a rooftop, puts up a steel frame and netting, adds LED floodlights and takes bookings, usually online. There is no need to buy land or rely on municipal grounds, and the materials last.

According to the article, lanes typically cost between Rs1,500 and Rs3,500 an hour, and evening slots are often booked well in advance. Venues of this kind are clustered in Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad, and many now also host futsal and badminton, which helps operators fill their courts across the day.

For players, the enclosed format changes the game. Short boundaries, nets on every side and a fixed playing area reward quick scoring and sharp fielding, and a full match can be finished in an hour after work or college. That is a big part of the appeal of box cricket for groups of friends who want competitive cricket without spending a whole day at a ground.

The limits of the boom

The Friday Times piece was clear that private nets are not a full answer. A rooftop venue is not a public playground, and children whose families cannot spare around Rs300 per head for a session are still left out. The author argued that the rise of these venues is effectively a market response to a shortage of public sports space, and asked whether policymakers would treat it as a signal to invest in open grounds.

What it means for Lahore's cricket

For now, box and net cricket are giving thousands of urban players a regular game they would otherwise struggle to find. They also feed into a wider indoor sports economy in the city, alongside futsal pitches and the padel courts that have spread across Lahore in 2026.

The bigger question is balance. Private venues can keep the game alive in crowded neighbourhoods, but a city that wants its next generation of cricketers to come from every background will still need parks, school grounds and community fields that anyone can walk on to for free.