When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto told me that he was appointing me Secretary of Information & Broadcasting, I told him that I would not accept the post. He was visibly surprised. “Why not?” he had asked me. I told him that there were a number of reasons but the most important was that it would change the basis of our friendship. I felt the same way when Kardar appointed me manager of the Pakistan team that would be touring England.
He was the president of then BCCP and our relationship would become one of employer and employee. But I accepted the assignment and it did put a strain on our friendship since I was not receptive to any interference. But the friendship survived. But the course of true friendships, like love, never runs smooth and we had our periods of sulks.
I had first cast eyes on him when he played for the Muslims in the Bombay Pentangular but this was from the distance of the Islam Gymkhana stand at the Brabourne Stadium. He had then been selected for India for its tour of England in 1946. The captain of the team had been the Nawab of Pataudi Sr. who had played for England but never for India and now was its captain, the muddle in cricket is not of recent making. At the end of that tour, Kardar had entered the portals of Oxford. After Oxford, he joined the Burma Oil Company and became a colleague of my brother Asif and this was the connection that brought Kardar and me together, not cricket. My brother had spoken warmly of him and both shared a loathing of the box-walla mindset. After all, one had gone to Oxford and the other to the London School of Economics. They had not been destined to become members of the trading classes, particularly of a British oil company.
I first met Kardar by chance. He was coming out of Kwality, a snack-bar on Karachi’s then Victoria Road and I was entering it. He must have seen the family resemblance to my brother and I, of course, knew who he was. Kardar was then getting ready to take the Pakistan team to England in 1954. The chance meeting led to other meetings. I was then working for Merwanji Dalal, an eccentric but lovable entrepreneur and I had convinced him that we should go into the publishing business. I asked Kardar whether we were planning to write a book on the England tour. He had written one on the inaugural tour to India. He said that he was and I offered to be the publisher. He agreed. It was while he was writing his book Test Status on Trial that he and I got close.
Kardar was an authority-figure. Unfortunately the authority he believed in was his. When he was captain, he brooked no interference. When he was chairman of the selection committee, the other members of his committee were figure-heads and when he became the president of the cricket board he was like Henry Ford who did not mind what colour his cars were so long as they were black. Yet as a person, there was nothing arbitrary about him. He was a man of great charm and was a good listener and open to suggestions. He had not wasted his time at Oxford and the many hours we spent together were not cricket-hours. One of the friends I met through him was M. Raschid who would become the Governor of the State Bank and Raschid did not know the difference between a cricket bat and a hockey stick. Indeed none of his close friends had anything to do with cricket and were scholarly people like Shafi Niaz and Dr Tanvir Ahmed and the irrepressible Masood Khadarposht, the iconoclastic civil servant, the loose cannon who called a spade a spade and if he had had his way, would have got the leaders of our fair land to use one. I mention these names, there were others, to show that there was more than one dimension to Kardar.
But it is Kardar the cricket captain that is remembered. All his other good deeds have been interred with his bones. Only Imran Khan can be compared with him though Imran led a far more experienced team. When Kardar took the Pakistan team to India in 1952-53, only he and Amir Elahi had played Test cricket and Amir Elahi was all but a senior citizen. The team left Pakistan as a band of enthusiastic cricketers and came home battle-hardened and as a combination. Cricket was a team game and this had been drilled into the players. Kardar was a total captain. On the field, every player had his allotted role and he tolerated no nonsense. Off the field, he kept an eye on the players but he recognized that they had to let out steam and there was no tolling of a curfew-bell summoning them back to their hotel-rooms.
One late evening, Kardar, Jamsheed Marker and I were returning from the Dhaka Club and we came upon what looked like a commotion in the lobby of our hotel. One of the players who shall remain nameless had invited a lady guest to his room was arguing fiercely with the hotel staff who had sent for their security guards. Kardar stepped in and wanted to know what was happening. When he was told, he asked the security guards to get lost, severely reprimanded the hotel staff who appeared terrified and then walked away. But he was only the bowler getting to his mark and having got there he ran in to administer a kick on the player’s backside. That was the end of the matter. All concerned learnt who was in charge.
Kardar was often at logger-heads with the cricket establishment but invariably on behalf of his players, wanting and getting the best hotel accommodation for them and they travelled either by air or first-class, air-conditioned, by train. He was a man of strong likes and dislike but this never interfered with his cricket judgment. Not all the players may have liked him but they gave their best to the team. He had inculcated in them a sense of national pride. Jamsheed Marker and I had our lunch and tea in the Pakistan dressing-room and no matter how good or bad the session may have been, the atmosphere in the dressing-room was that of a happy family and Zulfikar Ahmed would be telling his Sardarji jokes and it was not uncommon that there was a sing-song led by Alimuddin. Yet for all this, it was a disciplined team. Good leadership is about finding the right balance.
I had my share of disagreements with him. He had been responsible for the appointment of Javed Burki as captain for Pakistan’s tour of England in 1962. I disagreed with the choice because Imtiaz or Hanif Mohammad had better claims. He and I got into an argument that became a slanging match. That evening he came to my house and said that, perhaps, I had been right and the hatchet was buried.
The last time I spoke with him was on the telephone from the residence of Humayun Khan who was our ambassador in London. Kardar was ambassador at Berne and Humayun Khan had rung him up and told him that I was having dinner with him and handed me the telephone. Kardar asked me why I was still associating with “goondas”, as he called the players. He seemed disenchanted with cricket. He also sounded a little on the lonely side. “Why not go home via Berne? “ as he invited me. “We can talk about old times.” I didn’t take up his invitation. I wish I had. We both needed some cheering him up. Would I have stuck with cricket if Kardar was not there in the beginning? I don’t think so.
When Zulfikar Ali Bhutto told me that he was appointing me Secretary of Information & Broadcasting, I told him that I would not accept the post. He was visibly surprised. “Why not?” he had asked me. I told him that there were a number of reasons but the most important was that it would change the basis of our friendship. I felt the same way when Kardar appointed me manager of the Pakistan team that would be touring England.
