Autobiography of veteran cricket commentator launched

'Far More Than A Game' an autobiography of renowned cricket writer and broadcaster Qamar Ahmed was launched on Monday at HBL Tower.

The launching ceremony, hosted by Habib Bank Limited (HBL), saw overwhelming participation from people representing different walk of life particularly from sports. During the launching ceremony Qamar Ahmed shared various anecdotes of his personal as well as professional life and experiences, interesting and unbelievable incident of players happed during his career. He informed that Imran Khan, now Prime Minister, used to stay at his West London flat when he was overnighting in London and shared some events relate to Imran Khan.

Qamar's 294 pages book is about far more than cricket. He has shared the ups and downs, the joys and despairs, the agonies and the ecstasies, the triumphs and tragedies of his compatriots. During his career, there is no fact that he does not have at his fingertips and no important episode he missed.

He has worked for print and broadcast media, both Pakistani and overseas, particularly Dawn. Apart from print media, he has been a regular incisive broadcast commentator and summariser, contributing to outlets in every Test-playing country.

Qamar informed that he has covered 450 test matches. The first match he reported was England against Pakistan at Lords in 1974, which was the 743rd Test Match. He reported nearly 30 percent of all the Test Matches played in the last forty years. These have taken him to 59 of the 107 venues used for Test cricket.

He has also covered 738 One-day internationals, including the first eight cricket World Cups and his last one in 2019. In all, he covered nine out of 12 World Cups. During his career, he has acquired universal respect throughout the world of cricket for the integrity of his reporting and analysis.

As per book, Qamar was born in Mughal Serai in United Province (now Uttar Pradesh) in India and he spent the first ten years of his life in Chapra (Bihar) and after partition he shifted to Karachi and later moved to Hyderabad. At the heart of this book is Qamar Ahmed's return to India for the first time in 1978-79 as a journalist to cover Pakistan cricket tour.

Sultan Ali Allana Chairman HBL and Iqbal Saleh Muhammad of Paramount addressed the ceremony. While, the ceremony was also attended by Muhammad Aurangzeb President HBL and sports stars including Zaheer Abbas, Jahangir Khan, Mushtaq Muhammad, Moin Khan, Wasim Bari, Sadiq Muhammad, Sarfraz Ahmed, Younus Khan, Abdur Razzak and others.