May 16, 2004

I need to define some terms. These articles will be about my favourite cricket persons who may or may not be cricket players. They will be people who impacted on my life through cricket. It is a very long list since my association with cricket has spanned many years. I am, myself, defined as a cricket person which, although, one dimensional, is a term of endearment. How I got to be one will be the subject of a book I am hoping to write, Nearer Draw of Stumps. Edmund Hillary was asked why he had climbed Everest. “Because it was there, “ he had said. Cricket has been there all my life.

There is no fixed order about the people I will write about. Rather like the poet who found verse in fields of corn and merely set them down, the names will come to me on the spur of a moment of recall, a stray happenstance when a memory-jolt of all kinds of everything remind me of some person or situation.

Let me begin with Jamsheed Marker. Jemi was a friend of mine before we became a commentary-team. And he has remained a friend of mine though his association with cricket now is that of a distant devotee. In 1954-55, India made its first ever tour of Pakistan. Radio Pakistan had asked me if I would do the commentary. I had, of course, agreed. Jemi telephoned me to say that Mr Rashid Ahmed who was then the Deputy Director General of Radio had asked him to do the commentary and what I thought of the idea and more important, whether this had my blessings. Quite frankly, I had not seen Jemi as a cricket person for while we would discuss every subject under the sun, cricket rarely, if ever, came up. I had introduced him to Abdul Hafeez Kardar and they became good friends. I told Jemi I was absolutely thrilled. And so we became a commentary team, a sort of pairing and “over to Omar Kureishi/Jamsheed Marker” entered into the dialect of cricket fans.

What sort of person is Jamsheed Marker? I once said of him that he was one of the few persons I could praise behind his back. Last year, the PCB gave a reception for me on being awarded the Sitara-I-Imtiaz, the citation was commentary-specific. I said in my speech that half the award should have gone to Jamsheed Marker; “There would have been no Omar Kureishi had there been no Jamsheed Marker.” My bad luck was Jemi was present at the function otherwise I would have said more.

Jemi is a wealthy man but he is easy in his skin with his affluence. This is because it is “old money” and did not materialize by some sudden discovery of an oil-well in his back-garden or some other chance turn of the wheel of fortune or its manipulation. There is not a trace of opulence in his living style unless the stacks of books and his music cassettes can be considered that. He was not a regular at Zelin’s Coffee House in the way a few others were, like the pendulum swing of a grandfather clock, but he would turn up and mix it up with us in the tomfoolery that would pass as earnest discussion. I mention this merely to show how comfortable he was with persons who would ordinarily not be among his circle of friends, the social elite.

I first met him at my brother Sattoo’s Friday Nights at Air Cottage where an eclectic group of writers, poets, artists and all those who fall in the category of the thinking classes would gather every week and just talk and argue and hold forth. One of the regulars was Suharwardy and one evening he brought along with him a fire-brand political leader whose name was Mujibur Rehman. On another evening, I brought along a friend of mine whose name was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Friday Night, in spirit, was like the Speaker’s Corner of Hyde Park, a sanctuary of free speech.

Friendships feed off one another. Through Jemi, I met Roedad Khan. Jemi and Roedad had been at FC College in Lahore and though they have travelled on different roads, the bonds formed on campus have strengthened. Roedad too became a close friend of mine and my brothers Abo and Sattoo and in his own right qualifies as one of my favourite persons though not a cricket person. A very forthright man and a special friend.

I met Dr Ronnie Holland, an eye-surgeon at Jemi’s house. Dr Holland ran an eye-camp at Shikarpur every winter and he, along with his team of doctors carried out hundreds of cataract operations. People would come to his camp from as far as Afghanistan and Iran. I visited the camp and stayed in one of the tents and wrote an article on it. It was quite a sight, the camp, there was almost a carnival atmosphere.

As a commentary-team, Jemi and I complemented each other, we were not competitive. We would arrive at the ground together and leave together. Outside Karachi, we would stay in the same hotel. In the evenings, often joined by ‘Skipper’ Kardar, we would meet with mutual friends or go out and investigate the local cuisine. Cricket was rarely discussed.

A very strong influence on our friendship was his late wife, Diana. I was a free spirit then, a journalist who lived life on my own, untidy terms. To her, I could have been the wild man of Borneo. Diana was a lady in every sense of the word, which meant too that one had to mind one’s P’s and Q’s in her presence. No rough language or unbecoming behaviour. But she became a part of our commentary-team and would sit in the commentary-box and it was a different world to which she was accustomed and for a day she would become one of the boys. She was one very fine lady.

I owe Jemi more than I can repay, whenever I felt that I needed someone to turn to or lean on, he was there for me. A friendship that has lasted well over fifty years can have some dry periods or moments of disagreement. Not so in this case. I think the friendship would have survived if there hadn’t been a cricket-commentary connection but it has been nourished by such memories as the roughing up of Idris Beg, the umpire by members of the MCC A team in Peshawar. Jemi, Kardar and I were at the PAF Mess when we learnt of the incident. The following morning the three of us had gone to Kohat to spend a day with Roedad Khan. When we returned we went to see Idris Beg. His left-hand was in a sling. It was Jemi who pointed out that the previous evening, it was his right-hand that was in a sling. “Bhai, you must make up your mind which hand is injured,” he told him. Bhai Idris said he had forgotten.” I can change it if you like,” he said. It was a lot of fun in those days. Perhaps, it came through in our commentary, this sharing together of the joys and sorrows of our cricket team.

Jemi will probably be embarrassed by the little I have written about him. I have not written about him as an ambassador of Pakistan in many capitals of the world. That has nothing to do with him being a cricket person. But it must say something for him that as a non-career diplomat, he was able to survive in the snake-infested jungles of the Foreign Office. He had been our ambassador at the United Nations. He had retired when I went to the United Nations in the late 1990’s. Many members of the staff at our mission came up to me and told me in low voices and hushed tones how much they missed him in case the incumbent ambassador overheard them and interpreted it as a criticism of him. That’s the way I have always felt ever since our commentary team broke up. I have missed saying “Over to Jamsheed Marker.”

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)