THE sad news about Zafar Altaf’s unexpected death a few days back was, to an extent, alleviated when I read Khalid H. Khan’s obituary on Dawn’s sports page (Dec 7). It provided a balanced assessment of Zafar’s cricketing career and of how close Zafar was on the Indian tour of 1960-1961 to playing a Test match for Pakistan.

Zafar was one of those gifted cricketers who joined the Civil Service of Pakistan. Their preoccupation with official duties, at the start of their careers, prevented them from continuing to play serious cricket as young officers. Cricket and the civil service both demanded round-the-clock commitment. Javed Burki, Zafar Altaf, Khalid Aziz and Javed Masud (Zafar’s batchmate who passed away only a few weeks ago) had to abort their careers as cricketers after joining the service. This was the case even with Mr Burki who had made it to the Test level by the time he entered the Civil Service Academy as a probationer.

Zafar obtained his doctorate from the London Business School and, on his return to official duties, decided to specialise in public policy issues relating to agriculture. He won promotion to the rank of federal secretary ahead of many contemporaries and as agriculture secretary, in Islamabad, continued to take initiatives before the recent constitutional amendment rendered the federal government impotent in affairs relating to agriculture policy making.

Zafar was a friend and colleague with whom it was always exciting to indulge in an argument whether it concerned politics or cricket.

I invited him to join the Mandarins, a cricket team for civil servants, which started out in 1974. He continued to write occasionally. His friends will miss him.

Mueen Afzal

Lahore

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2015