Qamar Ahmed, a veteran cricket journalist – reporter, writer, commentator – and a former first-class cricketer, passed away after cardiac-related illness in Karachi on Thursday, June 18. He was 88.
Born in Bihar on October 23, 1937, Qamar migrated to Pakistan with his family a year after the Partition of the sub-continent and settled in Hyderabad, Sindh. There, he completed a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Sindh.
He played 17 first-class matches for Hyderabad and Sindh in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy for seven years — from 1955-56 to 1962-63 — as a slow left-arm orthodox spinner.
Then he began his career in cricket journalism from Hyderabad. In the early 1960s, Qamar left for England where he settled and worked as a freelance journalist. He worked for several international newspapers and news agencies and covered cricket matches for them. He also worked for TV New Zealand as a broadcaster during the 1992 World Cup which Pakistan won under the captaincy of Imran Khan.
Qamar, as a professional reporter, covered over 400 Test matches and more than 700 One-day Internationals in different countries. Moreover, he reported the first nine 50-over World Cup tournaments held from 1975 to 2007.
He also wrote several books on cricket, including Pakistan Book of Cricket (annual from 1976 to 1998–99), Testing Time (1983), Showdown: The Story of Pakistan’s Tour of the West Indies 1993 (1993) and Far More than A Game (his autobiography in 2020).