Q for quality and quantity

The phone rang one day in 1986ldquoHello this is Qamar Ahmed from Londonrdquo The voice at the other end belonged to one of cricket journalismrsquos 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 tobepublished imprint of his Pakistan Book of Cricket 198586Little did I know then that by 1999 when Pakistan resumed Test cricket ties with India after a decadelong 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 passingQamar Ahmed mdash Q to cricketers and fellow journalists mdash died on June 18 at the age of 89 little more than a week after telling me he had suffered a heart attackHis 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 ldquoI have only warm memories of Q and I will be surprised if anyone else has any otherrdquo he wrote on XWhen I informed Ian Chappell of Qamarrsquos passing his response was ldquoA decent blokerdquo Ravi Shastri asked me to convey his condolences to the family of ldquoa lovely manrdquo Later that day Abdul Majid Bhatti another veteran journalist told me that Qamarrsquos funeral witnessed a congregation of cricketers and journalists from KarachiFor 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 Cricketersrsquo Almanack year after yearIn his early years in London his Shepherdrsquos 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 turbulentIn 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 ldquosticking out his chest urging Imran to take a swingrdquoIn Imran Khan author Ivo Tennant referred to another confrontationmdash this time during a flight mdash that again required Miandadrsquos interventionWhen I revisited Qamarrsquos 2020 memoir Far More Than a Game I found that he dismissed Miandadrsquos account of the Shepherdrsquos 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 Indiarsquos victory over Pakistan in a Sharjah game the previous year a claim that probably fuelled the disputeThe relationship never truly recoveredAfter the win in Auckland which caused Pakistanrsquos dramatic entry into the 1992 World Cup final Imran came out looking for someone ldquoWhere are the jackalsrdquo Debasish Datta a good friend of Qamarrsquos recalled Imran saying thenQamar also played an important role in one of cricketrsquos landmark moments Former South Africa captain Ali Bacher regarded him as a trusted ally in the campaign to secure South Africarsquos return to international cricket after apartheid When Bacher invited cricket legends and leading journalists to celebrate the unification of the countryrsquos white and nonwhite cricket boards in 1991 Qamar was among the select inviteesQamarrsquos achievements as a journalist were remarkable He covered more than 450 Test matches and produced several memorable exclusivesPerhaps 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 Lordrsquos 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 LondonI almost forgot to tell you that Qamar was a firstclass cricketer himself A leftarm spinner and righthanded batsman he represented Sindh South Zone and Hyderabad in Pakistanrsquos domestic cricket In Press versus Cricketers festival games the media considered him as their key playerBorn in Chapra Bihar before Partition Qamarrsquos family mdash headed by his dentist father mdash migrated to PakistanDuring Pakistanrsquos 197980 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 BariMany of Qamarrsquos 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 heartmiddayrsquos Deputy Editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stanceHe tweets ClaytonMurzello Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper