QAMAR AHMED, the journalist and broadcaster who chronicled over six decades of international cricket and was affectionately known across press boxes simply as “Q”, died in Karachi on 18 June, aged 88. He had been admitted to hospital earlier in the month following a cardiac episode, and his funeral was held at Masjid Bait-ul-Salam in DHA Phase IV after Maghrib prayers.

News of his passing brought an outpouring of grief from across the cricket world, with former players, commentators and fellow journalists describing a void that few believe can be filled.

Former Pakistan captain Younis Khan was among those who paid tribute, and ESPNcricinfo’s editor-in-chief Sambit Bal wrote that for 25 years of covering English cricket, Qamar had always been there “with a smile, with warmth, and with a bag of wicked stories,” adding that something essential had now gone missing from the Lord’s press box. Commentator Harsha Bhogle, who credited Qamar with looking after him as a nervous debutant touring England in 1990, called him “generous and large hearted” and signed off his tribute with “Khuda Hafiz Q Bhai.”

From Hyderabad’s domestic circuit to Fleet Street

Born on 23 October 1937 in Mughal Sarai, Uttar Pradesh, Qamar’s own cricketing career began on the other side of the rope. A slow left-arm orthodox bowler, he played 17 first-class matches for Sind and Hyderabad through the late 1950s and into the early 1960s, picking up wickets good enough to have pushed him toward Pakistan selection — most notably ahead of the 1957–58 tour of the Caribbean.

Based in Hyderabad rather than the selectorial strongholds of Lahore or Karachi, he never got the international call. He liked to tell people he held one rare distinction instead: having dismissed Hanif, Sadiq and Mushtaq Mohammad all on their respective Test debuts, including getting Hanif out for 129 the match before Hanif compiled his world-record 499.

By the early 1960s, Qamar had relocated to England, where he built a freelance career that would stretch across BBC, Reuters and AFP, among other outlets. It was the beginning of what became one of the longest unbroken vigils any journalist has kept over the sport: more than 450 Test matches by most counts (some obituaries place the figure closer to 450), and around 750 738 One-Day Internationals depending on the source, alongside nine Cricket World Cups.

He also did television and radio work, including a stint with TVNZ during the 1992 World Cup — the tournament Pakistan won under Imran Khan. His 400th Test as a correspondent came at Sharjah in January 2014, during the third Test between Pakistan and Sri Lanka; only a handful of journalists anywhere have covered more.

Qamar eventually grew weary of what he called “pyjama cricket” and stopped covering one-dayers in his later years, narrowing his attention to the format he loved best.

A witness to cricket’s defining moments

Few journalists have been present for as much cricket history as Qamar. He was in the players’ hotel during the 1976–77 pay dispute that forced the professionalisation of Pakistani cricketers, and he was on the ground in the Caribbean in 1992–93 when Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Mushtaq Ahmed and Aaqib Javed were briefly detained over marijuana possession — an episode he later wrote about in his book Testing Times. He was also in Lahore in March 2009 when terrorists attacked the touring Sri Lankan team, one of the darkest days in the sport’s history.

His reporting beat was never confined to Pakistan. Qamar watched Sunil Gavaskar reach 10,000 Test runs, saw Richard Hadlee take his 400th wicket, was present for Anil Kumble’s perfect ten, and covered both cricket’s 1,000th Test and its 2,000th in 2011.

He turned his recollections into books as well as columns, ghost-writing the autobiographies of Hanif Mohammad and Waqar Hasan. His own memoir, alternately titled Far More Than a Game (2020) in some accounts, traced his journey from student life in Hyderabad, Sindh, through his cricketing days to a life spent following the game around the world.

The press box’s host

What set Qamar apart, by every account, was less the volume of his output than the warmth he brought to the trade. His home in London became something of a fixture on the touring circuit: a stop where cricketers and journalists alike could expect generous hospitality and, by reputation, an equally generous table — Qamar was as known for his cooking as for his copy.

Imran Khan and Javed Miandad were said to be regulars there, and Qamar counted Mushtaq Mohammad and Zaheer Abbas, two of Pakistan’s most influential cricketers of that era, among his closest friends.

He was equally close to the late film star Mohammad Ali, a friendship that supplied many of the stories Qamar loved to tell — and that, depending on the company, he would or wouldn’t repeat.

That access reflected an older, more intimate relationship between the sport and the people who wrote about it, one with far less distance between journalists and their subjects than exists today. Even after he scaled back his travel, Qamar remained part of cricket’s social fabric. As recently as last October he attended the UK Cricket Media Club lunch — he was a long-standing member — and was given a cheerful toast for his birthday, appearing, by all accounts, in good health.

He kept playing the game socially into the mid-2000s, turning his arm over in press and media matches, and stood as an umpire once his own bowling days were done. By every telling, his enthusiasm for cricket never dimmed.

Qamar Ahmed is survived by his family. He is remembered, above all, as a generous host, an irrepressible storyteller, and one of the last living links to a more intimate age of cricket journalism.