It is always refreshing when cricket officials affiliated with the game’s topmost echelons decide to write about their life’s involvement with cricket management. Hence, Arif Ali Khan Abbasi’s memoir-cum-history, Not A Gentleman’s Game, is a remarkably welcome endeavour. Ironically, it is the very title that perturbs me most since Abbasi himself is a true gentleman down to his very fingertips. Yet on perusing the book one appreciates that Abbasi’s numerous encounters with gubernatorial interference and what he terms “ad-hocism” in cricket left him with a bad taste in the mouth. This compelled him to bring to one’s attention the point that, given the encroaching realities of the matter, it is delusional to regard cricket as a gentleman’s sport.

Rather amusingly, Abbasi notes that if Superman had to solve cricket’s problems, he would go racing back to Krypton and even they would not have had a solution! On a lighter side, as cricket is now being played at the international level under the aegis of the International Cricket Council (ICC) in all formats, it qualifies to be loosely termed a ‘unisex’ sport, and hence the title of the book is typically Abbasi tongue-in-cheek.

But I am excitedly getting ahead of myself so I shall try and start at the beginning. An introduction by former English cricketer R.V.C. Robins and a commendatory foreword by the redoubtable Ehsan Mani, former president of the ICC, precede Abbasi’s account — both give glowing commendations as to the author’s diligence and grace under pressure. A photo testifying to the undeniable good looks of his youth follows these pieces — rather romantically underscoring young Abbasi’s position as someone possessing heroic potential.

Former cricket administrator Arif Abbasi’s memoir has vast stores of information and anecdotes, but seems disjointed in its presentation

The elegance with which he presents an account of his early years is worth a measure of commendation in and of itself. The son of elite parents, Abbasi was brought up in PECHS, Karachi. He attended St Patrick’s High School, then St Edmund Hall, Oxford, from where — although as he himself admits with refreshing frankness, he was no scholar — he graduated. My only grouse with him is that he chose Oxford to Cambridge. He played at the Oxford University Parks, but I would have liked to have seen him flourish at Fenner’s (the University of Cambridge’s cricket grounds) and gain a light Blue. Unfortunately, I never saw him play as although he looks much younger, he is about three years my senior. But I am informed that he was a very classical and stylish batsman.

From Oxford, after a stint working in the United Kingdom, he returned to Pakistan where he married and took up a position as Pakistan International Airlines’s (PIA) director of public affairs (not in that order) and, much later, the secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in Pakistan (BCCP). With characteristic humour that alternates between tongue-in-cheek and self-deprecating, Abbasi recounts his salad days with a mixture of verve and fond remembrance. His marriage to Nawabzadi Anjum Chhatari in March 1969 is recounted with equal fondness and no small measure of respect — it is amusing how, being rather highbrow herself, she steadied their partnership early on with a firm request that he get a “proper job” — which he did at PIA. With utmost respect, one should note that these days Chhatari would not have considered a job at PIA as “proper”. Never content with mediocrity, Abbasi went on to be executive director there, and later managing director — three times — and writes an interesting account of the professional challenges he faced during his relative youth.

The late Air Marshal Nur Khan and Abbasi appeared to have had a symbiotically beneficial relationship and Abbasi gratefully credits the former PIA and BCCP chairman as having entrusted him with the handling of many issues, especially those that involved liaising with the ICC and Asian Cricket Council (ACC). In fact, he was instrumental in creating the ACC and thus helping shape the image of Pakistani cricket abroad.

Abbasi also details his successful dealings with the Pakistan Tobacco Company regarding sponsorship. He emphasises on more than one occasion how vital the issue of neutral umpiring — the brainchild of Imran Khan — was to him. He does not mince words when it comes to delineating how certain things shocked him, such as the awarding of a Test against Zimbabwe to the unequipped Defence Cricket Ground in the 1990s. His tensions with some of the policies and practices of former chief justice (the late) Nasim Hasan Shah also crop up repeatedly, but sunbursts of controversy such as this are strewn across the star-studded banner of any major cricketing executive’s career.

Abbasi generously praises Javed Miandad, which is not surprising given the latter’s enormous contributions to cricket often in the face of pressure or adversity. While his praise of Imran Khan is not quite so warmly unequivocal, he naturally gives credit where it is due, especially underscoring Khan’s prowess as a bowler even if the cricketer’s diva attitude did not sit well with Abbasi. His respect for the English is steadfast to the point of being staunch, though he acknowledges problems associated with media biases stemming from the UK.

Regarding controversial topics such as match-fixing, he simply believes in strong deterrents and severe punishments. Although his various struggles with management figures and the government are to be respected, he all too often should have been compelled to realise over the course of his career that forces beyond his control would place him in an isolated position. That Abbasi reacted strongly to the government’s eventual suggestion that the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) become a statutory body is hardly surprising since his personal vision was at odds with this — he wished it to have the status of a public company. Abbasi played a significant role in saving large areas of valuable land for the PCB which some of the managements had given or gifted away for housing projects. An interesting set of appendices contain intriguing epistles, such as his letter resigning as chief executive of the PCB in 1996 — this in spite of a unanimous vote of confidence given to him by the PCB’s general body and Executive Council.

The problem with Abbasi’s book, however, is not the information, which should grip and hold the attention of anyone interested in cricket management. It is the way the information is presented. Beyond the first 50 pages, one gets very little material on his personal life (his wife and daughters and family events seem to have been forgotten) so the book can hardly be called an autobiography in any legitimate sense of the word. The remaining pages of text, barring appendices and some photographs of historic worth, read like excerpts from an engagement diary that have been strung together largely at random. Pearls of wisdom indeed, but this is cricketing under discussion, not a jewellery showcase. It can be argued that there was no other form in which to present the vast amounts of information to which Abbasi has been privy, but unless one is personally very well-versed in cricket history — which many are not — the book slips into the danger of disjointed scholarship. This is a shame, since Abbasi’s personal style of prose, when honed and focused, is warm and engaging. Sound application of this could have led to the book being an easier read for a much wider audience.

Abbasi — in spite of his many practical accomplishments that have furthered the cause of cricket not just in Pakistan but across the globe — remains an idealist. Thus, his feelings carry him away on more than one occasion, such as making the sweeping comment that “Unlike Mujeebur Rehman Khan, Najam Sethi could not claim to be a cricket lover.” This, to quote the Bard, creates plenty of sound and fury, but to what end? His anger at former chairman Lt Gen (retired) Tauqir Zia’s decision to dissociate the PCB from the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan may be justified in his mind, but can he in all fairness present any story other than his own?

Towards the conclusion of the text, Abbasi writes passionately and from the heart: “The PCB would become a big company. It had to do this to flourish. It did not develop as I wanted, because people plotted against it ... The patron of the PCB, President Farooq Leghari, gave a completely clueless request to me to turn the PCB into a statutory body. Did he know the meaning of a statutory body? Did he know the purpose it was meant to serve? Did he even know why he wanted it to become a statutory body? He could not look me in the face. Nor could his principal secretary. They left the disagreeable job to the additional secretary. It was obviously a plot.”

All I can note in concluding is that disappointments in cricket management are as common as appointments. As a gentleman himself, Abbasi, of all people, should appreciate this.

The reviewer is a cricket commentator and former chief executive of the Pakistan Cricket Board

Not a Gentleman’s Game
By Arif Ali Khan Abbasi
Ushba, Pakistan
ISBN: 978-9699154447
268pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, January 21st, 2018