Traffic Branch win Sindh Police's first Ramadan tape ball tournament in Karachi

Karachi has long treated the holy month as cricket season. Once the fast is broken and taraweeh prayers are done, floodlit grounds and taped-up tennis balls take over large parts of the city. In March 2026 that tradition found a new set of participants: the Sindh Police.

A first for the force

The Sindh Police Sports Board staged its 1st SPSB Ramadan-ul-Mubarak Tape Ball Cricket Tournament on 14 and 15 March 2026 at Asghar Ali Shah Cricket Stadium in Karachi. The event was run by the Sports Directorate based at Sindh Police Headquarters, and it was billed by the board as the opening edition, which suggests the organisers intend to make it a recurring fixture on the Ramadan calendar.

Eight teams drawn from different wings of the provincial police took part:

• Central Police Office (CPO)
• Karachi Range
• Traffic Branch
• Special Branch
• SSU
• CTD Sindh
• West Zone
• South Zone

The result

Over the two days of competition, the Traffic Branch side came out on top and were listed by the Sports Board as champions of the tournament. West Zone finished as runners-up. The board's official tournament page did not publish a full fixture list, scorecards or individual awards, so the detail available is limited to the participating sides and the two finalists.

That in itself is typical of tape ball cricket at grassroots level. Much of the game is played in short, fast formats, often across a single weekend, and records are rarely kept in the way they are for hard-ball cricket. What matters to the players is the contest itself and the bragging rights that follow.

Why Ramadan and tape ball fit together

The link between the holy month and night cricket in Karachi runs deep. A 2023 ProPakistani feature traced the city's Ramadan tournament culture back to the Nazimabad Super Cup, which began in 1978 and was first played on a cement pitch at the Eidgaah ground. Its organisers are credited locally with pioneering night cricket in the region around the turn of the 1980s. That event has since given way to the Naya Nazimabad Ramadan Cup, which by 2022 had grown into a 15-team competition attracting well-known professional names and serving as a scouting stage for emerging players.

Tape ball cricket sits at the more informal end of that culture. It needs little more than a tennis ball wrapped in electrical tape, a bat and a strip of open ground or a stadium square under lights. The cooler night air during Ramadan and the shift in daily routines make late-evening matches practical, which is why the month produces a burst of tournaments across neighbourhoods, offices and institutions.

Institutional sport at street level

The Sindh Police event shows how that street format is now being adopted by organisations as a way to bring staff together. Department and workplace tournaments give people who may never play formal club cricket a structured competition, and the short format means a full event can be completed in a weekend without disrupting duty rosters.

For Karachi's tape ball scene, an organised tournament at an established stadium also adds a measure of visibility to a game that usually lives in side streets and community grounds. If the Sports Board follows through with a second edition in Ramadan 2027, the Traffic Branch will start as the team to beat.