Mir Mohammad Hussain was a double international. He had played hockey and football for India. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, he had held no office in the governing bodies of these two games. He had, instead, been the manager of the Pakistan cricket team that toured India in 1952 and then became the Secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in Pakistan (BCCP). It was in that capacity that I had first met him though he had been a family friend, perhaps, an Aligarh connection. Later he joined PIA as Sports Officer and, it could be said, was the pioneer in making PIA a power-house in sports.
Everyone called him Mir Sahib. There must have been something about him that got him instant respect for, otherwise, he was an unassuming man, soft-spoken and very much minded his business. Yet in his quiet way, he was effective. He had a dry sense of humour and this kind of humour often conceals sarcasm but there was no malice in him but his one-liners could be devastating. Often cricketers would come and see me to ask for jobs. I would either refer them to Mir Sahib or send for him and seek his advice. He was always spot on, saying little or nothing during the interview but would give me his assessment, balanced but sympathetic to the player. He had an eye for talent. When the star-studded PIA team did badly, it was Mir Sahib that was put on the carpet. “Sack the whole bloody lot,” I would tell him and he would tell me that he would do so. Later in the day, after I had cooled down, he would come and see me and ask me if my orders still held. “Give them a dressing down,” I would say and he would smile, as if to tell me that he knew all along that I was just shooting of at the mouth.
I had arranged for the PIA team to tour Ireland and made Mir Sahib the manager of the team. He didn’t seem to be someone who was too keen on foreign trips but happily accepted the assignment; his only reservation was that he would need to get some warm clothes. I joined the team on its last match at Dublin and the hosts told me that the PIA team had made a lot of friends for Pakistan and the credit for this went to the manager. “A fine ambassador for your country,” I was told.
Mir Sahib was a natural sportsman and he turned his attention to golf. He tried to persuade me to take up the game and brought me the forms of the Karachi Golf Club and offered to pay for my admission fee which was then a pittance. He did the next best thing. He put together a PIA golf team.
The PIA golf team came in handy when the airline was negotiating its traffic rights to Bangkok. The Thai civil aviation team happened to be keen golfers and it was suggested that they play against the PIA team. A lot of business is conducted on golf courses and I suggested half-jokingly that PIA should lose. I need not have worried for Mir Sahib was the only one in our team who could claim to be a golfer.
He was a modest man and rarely spoke about his own excellence in hockey in particular. He had played in an Indian team that included Dhyan Chand and Roop Singh and he kept a low profile in the hockey affairs of Pakistan. Was he a good cricketer? I never saw him play or even mention his great deeds on a cricket field. But I am sure that had he pursued playing the game with the same intensity that he loved the game he might have ended up as a triple international.
Shahid Rafi belonged to a different generation. He was a modern man. He is a senior bureaucrat, which would ordinarily make him a man who makes haste slowly. But he is a go-getter and he brings boundless energy to whatever he sets his mind to do or get done.
I first met him when he was the District Commissioner of Faisalabad and I had gone there to do the commentary of a Test match. There was no five-star hotel in the city that was called the Manchester of Pakistan. My incessant bitching about hotel facilities must have reached his ears for he offered to put me up in a government guest-house and place a car at my disposal. I declined but he and I became friends. He obviously was a keen follower of the game and would make some sharp observations and in a P.G. Wodehouse way “knew his onions.” He was articulate and thought on his feet and was a decision-maker rather than a file-pusher and on a personal level a man who wore his generosity on his sleeve. He had great personal charm. One did not get to visit Faisalabad too often and I next caught up with him when he became Commissioner, Lahore. He had carried his love of cricket with him and he had set aside a part of his residence for cricket nets. I used to tell him that it was the noblest misuse of an official residence.
It was during one of the nets sessions that he told me that he had been sounded out about becoming the Secretary of the BCCP and what I thought about the idea. I told him that he the administrative experience and more than a passing knowledge of cricket and he would be an excellent choice. He got the job.
He did not see it as a ceremonial post nor was he unaware that he would be in the public domain and would get his share of flak and even I might have a go at him once in a while. There may have been only a limited freedom of the press but it was open season on sports officials.
He got posted as Commissioner of Rawalpindi and he turned his attention to providing that city with a cricket stadium capable of hosting Test matches. Whenever I went to Islamabad, he would take me to the site of the stadium to see the work in progress. And when it was completed, he told me that he wanted me to do the commentary of the first international match played. As I remember, it was against Sri Lanka and I got my first glimpse of Sanath Jayasuriya.
But it was the 1992 World Cup in Australia that saw the best in him comes out. He had arrived when the Pakistan team was down in the dumps and had barged in my hotel room, notebook in hand and wanted my take on what had been going on. I told him to cool it and have a chat with Imran Khan but he was not to make any cock-eyed suggestions. I said that Imran was supremely confident that the team would rally. Farooq Mazhar and Khalid Hassan were also there and the four of us teamed up and we had some hilarious times.
Such is the nature of our politics that senior bureaucrats get sucked in the undertow and while they may rule during one regime find themselves orphans in another, sentenced to an Elba which is called OSD. Shahid Rafi suffered this fate but regime change brings about rehabilitation. Bureaucrats have great stamina but in power or out of it, Shahid Rafi was always there to play host to me whenever I went to Islamabad. He is my well-wisher and I am his and we are close friends and it was cricket that brought us together. But we have much more in common than this game and this includes the memory of Farooq Mazhar. Going by his initials, Shahid use to call him Field Marshal and we had many a dinner that went late into an Islamabad night.
Mir Mohammad Hussain was a double international. He had played hockey and football for India. Yet, to the best of my knowledge, he had held no office in the governing bodies of these two games. He had, instead, been the manager of the Pakistan cricket team that toured India in 1952 and then became the Secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in Pakistan (BCCP). It was in that capacity that I had first met him though he had been a family friend, perhaps, an Aligarh connection. Later he joined PIA as Sports Officer and, it could be said, was the pioneer in making PIA a power-house in sports.
