The Qasim Bagh Stadium in Multan is situated in one of the most prominent locations of the city. Located in the heart of the city, the Qasim Bagh Fort, which houses the stadium also, includes important landmarks such as the shrines of Hazrat Bahauddin Zakaria, Shah Rukn-e-Alam and other historical relics which date back centuries.
In the midst of such important historical places the Qasim Bagh Stadium was constructed in 1975 with a seating capacity of 18000. It hosted its first test match in 1980 and its first ODI in 1982, a match between Pakistan and India. But despite all its promises, the stadium became the victim of neglect and lost its importance. It didn’t host any more Test matches and hasn’t hosted an ODI since 1994. Moreover, the PCB doesn’t even see fit to host first class matches in the ground anymore and it is being used nowadays by local teams for cricket and football.
The construction of the Multan Cricket Stadium sentenced the Qasim Bagh stadium to ruin like the Old fort surrounding it. If the government and PCB had renovated the stadium and increased its capacity instead of building a new stadium, millions of rupees could have been saved and life could have been returned to a historical place of Multan.