Abdul Hafeez Kardar, the man who put Pakistan on the cricket map

As one walks around the spacious drawing room of the plush Gulberg-III villa, in the heart of the city, several paintings, books, fancy designed pots catch the eye.

And then, the septuagenarian Shahid Hafeez Kardar stops in one corner of the room, points towards a showcase and says, “That’s my father’s Hall of Fame cap…”

His father, the late Abdul Hafeez Kardar, was Pakistan’s first Test captain and one of the only three players to have played Test cricket for both India and Pakistan.

Widely acknowledged as having laid the foundations of the game in Pakistan, Kardar led the side with great skill and success, placing it on the world map as a major cricketing force. Though he made his Test debut against England, representing an undivided India team, back in 1946, under the name Abdul Hafeez, he added the family name Kardar after the tour and stayed back in England to go to the University College, Oxford and earn a degree in PPE.

Born in Lahore on January 17, 1925, this year marks the birth centenary of the legend. However, not many seem to remember the special moment. While there haven’t been any initiatives by the cricket fraternity to celebrate his landmark, with his family, too, keeping it a low-key private affair.

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“We remember him every day,” says Shahid. A noted economist and a former governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, Shahid, however, has taken steps to reprint some of the books Kardar had written during his playing days. A couple of years ago, he reprinted Kardar’s book ‘ Test Status on Trial – The Story of Pakistan Cricket Team’s Historic Tour to England’. “I thought that it would be the best way to remember him on his birth centenary,” Shahid says, adding that Kardar had a habit of writing a book after each tour or series. “That was not very common in this part of the world, but he was very particular about it…”

Some of the cricket books written by the late AH Kardar.
| Photo Credit:
Shayan Acharya

Shahid treasures all his father’s cricket books – including ‘ Green Shadows’,  ‘Inaugural Test Matches’ and  ‘Memories of an All-rounder’.

“Later, he wrote books on socio-political issues as well, but the cricket books chronicled the journey of him and his team,” Shahid says.

When in England, Kardar joined the county Warwickshire and played for three years before returning home in 1951, and he was also appointed the captain of Pakistan against MCC for the two unofficial Tests in Lahore and Karachi, where his team notched up a historic win after being set a target of 285, and Kardar led from the front with a fine half-century.

In October 1952, Pakistan embarked on its first official tour of India for a five-match Test series under Kardar, and as he later wrote in his book ‘ Inaugural Test Matches’, “The tour has been a success in many ways. The amount of enthusiasm for cricket that has been generated in Pakistan as a result of this tour is exceedingly pleasing to note. The game has come to stay…”

Former Pakistan captain AH Kardar with his Indian counterpart, Lala Amarnath, during the historic Test series of 1952.
| Photo Credit:
Shayan Acharya

Following the India tour, a young Pakistan side created history by winning a Test against England at The Oval in 1954 after Fazal Mahmood claimed 12 wickets, and even in his last tour of the West Indies in 1957-58, the team won the last Test at Port of Spain despite being dogged by injuries. However, the series was lost.

Having captained Pakistan in 23 matches, Kardar guided the team to victory over all the then Test-playing countries. While he dominated the field, Shahid remembers Kardar as a ‘strict father’. “He was very particular about my studies and growing up, I was not allowed to be out of the home after sunset. He was very, very strict,” he says with a smile. While Shahid wasn’t really encouraged to pursue cricket as a career, he remembers accompanying his father to the Gaddafi Stadium on several occasions when he was the president of the Pakistan’s Board of Control for Cricket between 1972 and 1977.

Kardar’s Hall of Fame cap which was presented to him posthumously by PCB.
| Photo Credit:
Shayan Acharya

“In one of those visits to the stadium, I remember him watching a young Javed Miandad bat. Javed hadn’t made it to the Pakistan team until then, and I remember my father telling Zafar Altaf, the then-secretary of the PCB, that ‘ Zafar, yaad rakh na, this boy is the find of the decade…’ And a few years later, Javed indeed went on to play for Pakistan and emerged as one of the legends of the game…” Shahid says.

While he was a visionary, Kardar moved away from the game once he parted ways with cricket administration. Though he would keep tabs on the team through newspaper reports and magazine stories, he wouldn’t watch the matches on television. Later, he entered politics and rose through the ranks, with his last public role being Pakistan’s ambassador to Switzerland.

However, Shahid remembers how popular his father was in Oxford. “He was a smart, good-looking, handsome man, and I remember when I went to Oxford, thirty years after him, some people from his time still remembered him. In Oxford, I was known more as AH Kardar’s son than by my name. That was the sort of popularity he had in those days at Oxford,” Shahid remembers with a smile.

After quitting the game, Kardar moved to Dhaka for business but returned to Karachi and then to Lahore in 1969, and Shahid remembers how his health deteriorated once he retired from public life. “And that’s why, I want to be busy with work as long as I can,” Shahid says.

Shahid, son of the late Abdul Hafeez Kardar.
| Photo Credit:
Shayan Acharya

Years after his demise, on April 21, 1996, Kardar was nominated for the Highest civilian award, Hilal-I-Imtiaz, in recognition of his contribution to the game in 2012, while the Pakistan Cricket Board inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2022. Though in 2017, the PCB introduced the A.H. Kardar Cup National U-16 Schools’ Cricket Championship, it did not continue for too long.

And as Shahid remembers his father, he reveals that hardly any of Kardar’s friends were cricketers. “He was friends with various people, with similar frame of mind. I remember [poet] Faiz Ahmed Faiz was among his friends, along with several others,” he says.

While nobody from the family followed Kardar’s footsteps and took up cricket as a career, Shahid lives with his memories.