Aaj News

 

Remembering Qamar Ahmed

By Dr Khalid Siddiqui
Ohio

 

Not many people know about him but he was the most famous Pakistani cricket journalist. His nickname was ‘Q’. He was born in 1938 in UP, British India. He died in Karachi on June 18, 2026 at the age of 88.

He started his cricket career in 1957 playing in first class matches as a left-arm spinner for Sind. He had the distinction of dismissing three Mohammad brothers - Hanif, Mushtaq and Sadiq. He came to England in 1964 to play club cricket but, instead, got a diploma in Journalism. He also had a master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Sind. He declined a job offer from BBC Urdu service and became a freelance cricket journalist. He lived mostly in England but, later on in life, moved back to Karachi. He remained a bachelor throughout his life.

He covered 450 Test matches and 732 ODIs which is a record for any cricket journalist. He also reported on nine men’s World Cups. He covered cricket games in almost all the stadia of the world. In 1991, he was invited to the dinner celebrating the merger of white and non-white cricket boards in South Africa. Taking advantage of this opportunity he met and interviewed Nelson Mandela at his home in Soweto, Johannesburg.   

In the olden days when cricketers were allowed to mingle with journalists, he gave his apartment keys in London to Javaid Miandad and Imran Khan who used to stay there on their way to Sussex to play county matches.

He was the ghost writer of the autobiographies of Hanif Mohammad and Waqar Hasan. He wrote his autobiography titled ‘More Than a Game’.  He used to hang out with Mushtaq Mohammad who lives in Birmingham. I have seen Ifti Bhai’s pictures with Mushtaq Mohammad. So, Ifti Bhai must have met Qamar Ahmed also.  

Qamar was a life member of the Cricket Media Club.

I met him for the first time in May 2000 in St John, Antigua where I had gone to watch the Test between Pakistan and WI. He was there covering the game for a news network in Pakistan. Both of us were staying at the same hotel which was only a walking distance from the stadium. We met in the lobby. I knew about him but had never met him personally. He invited me to join him at dinner which he was going to prepare himself in his room! It was a suite so all the cooking facilities were available.

He said that he never liked food in the Caribbean. He, therefore, had brought spices in small bottles in his suitcase. He bought chicken and other stuff at the local market. So, we had ‘home-cooked’ dinner on all five days. He would write the report of that day’s play in Urdu, and then read it on phone to a newsroom in Karachi where it would be recorded, and printed the next day. Those were the old days. He was a gold mine of cricket stats and stories. He himself was witness to many of those events. We kept in touch via telephone and email.

I met him again in 2005 in London. I had come to England from Paris through the Chunnel just for an overnight stay in a hotel in Ashford, near the Chunnel. He came to visit me at the hotel. He brought several cricket books for me including the book he wrote on Waqar Hasan. We had dinner together at the hotel. I never met him again but we remained in touch via email. The communication became quite infrequent in the past few years as he was not doing well health wise.