Q for quality and quantity

Qamar Ahmed (right) with illustrious cricket photographer Patrick Eagar at the Lord’s media centre in 2011. PIC/CLAYTON MURZELLO

The phone rang one day in 1986.

"Hello, this is Qamar Ahmed from London." The voice at the other end belonged to one of cricket journalism's most recognisable names. Qamar wanted to speak to the owner of The Marine Sports, the sports bookshop where I worked before becoming a cricket reporter. He was calling about a to-be-published imprint of his Pakistan Book of Cricket 1985-86.

Little did I know then that by 1999, when Pakistan resumed Test cricket ties with India after a decade-long hiatus, Qamar and I would be sharing press box space. Nor could I have imagined that four decades later, I would be writing about his passing.

Qamar Ahmed - Q to cricketers and fellow journalists - died on June 18 at the age of 89, little more than a week after telling me he had suffered a heart attack.

His death prompted heartfelt tributes from across the cricketing world. Harsha Bhogle recalled how Qamar had helped him on his first tour of England in 1990. "I have only warm memories of Q and I will be surprised if anyone else has any other," he wrote on X.

When I informed Ian Chappell of Qamar's passing, his response was: "A decent bloke." Ravi Shastri asked me to convey his condolences to the family of "a lovely man." Later that day, Abdul Majid Bhatti, another veteran journalist, told me that Qamar's funeral witnessed a congregation of cricketers and journalists from Karachi.

For much of his professional life, Qamar, a bachelor, was based in England, working for the BBC while contributing as a freelance writer to newspapers, magazines and, of course, the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack year after year.

In his early years in London, his Shepherd's Bush flat became a home away from home for young Pakistani cricketers, including Imran Khan and Javed Miandad. His relationship with Imran, however, eventually turned turbulent.

In his autobiography Cutting Edge, Miandad said he defused a confrontation between the two in the flat. According to him, Qamar, powerfully built in those days, stood his ground, "sticking out his chest, urging Imran to take a swing."

In Imran Khan, author Ivo Tennant referred to another confrontation - this time during a flight - that again required Miandad's intervention.

When I revisited Qamar's 2020 memoir, Far More Than a Game, I found that he dismissed Miandad's account of the Shepherd's Bush incident as fictional and wrote that he had rebuked him for including it. What he did acknowledge was the altercation with Imran on a plane during the 1992 World Cup. According to Qamar, an Indian journalist mischievously told Imran that he had celebrated India's victory over Pakistan in a Sharjah game the previous year, a claim that probably fuelled the dispute.

The relationship never truly recovered.

After the win in Auckland which caused Pakistan's dramatic entry into the 1992 World Cup final, Imran came out looking for someone. "Where are the jackals," Debasish Datta, a good friend of Qamar's, recalled Imran saying then.

Qamar also played an important role in one of cricket's landmark moments. Former South Africa captain Ali Bacher regarded him as a trusted ally in the campaign to secure South Africa's return to international cricket after apartheid. When Bacher invited cricket legends and leading journalists to celebrate the unification of the country's white and non-white cricket boards in 1991, Qamar was among the select invitees.

Qamar's achievements as a journalist were remarkable. He covered more than 450 Test matches and produced several memorable exclusives.

Perhaps his biggest scoop came in 1990, when Sunil Gavaskar revealed to him that he had declined life membership of the Marylebone Cricket Club for personal reasons. Qamar also recounted how Gavaskar was stopped by a steward at Lord's while trying to enter the ground to collect his press pass. Gavaskar had suffered similarly three years earlier during the MCC Bicentenary Test, when he represented the Rest of the World XI. The exclusive appeared in The Times of London.

I almost forgot to tell you that Qamar was a first-class cricketer himself. A left-arm spinner and right-handed batsman, he represented Sindh, South Zone and Hyderabad in Pakistan's domestic cricket. In Press versus Cricketers festival games, the media considered him as their key player.

Born in Chapra, Bihar, before Partition, Qamar's family - headed by his dentist father - migrated to Pakistan.

During Pakistan's 1979-80 tour of India, he grabbed the opportunity to visit his childhood home in Chapra. He wept uncontrollably as memories of the life his family had left behind came flooding back. On the same tour he got to meet some famous names in Bollywood and facilitated a telephonic conversation wherein Rishi Kapoor spoke to his hero, Wasim Bari.

Many of Qamar's contemporaries are either no more or retired. But Qamar will also be missed in press boxes all over the world by the younger lot of journalists who he encouraged. Befitting for a man who was always young at heart.

mid-day's Deputy Editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance.
He tweets @ClaytonMurzello. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.