Mian Saeed was born in Lahore in 1910. He made his first class debut in 1930 and soon established a reputation as an attractive batsman to watch with a wide array of strokes. He was selected to play Unofficial Tests for India against JK Ryder’s visiting Australian side in 1936 and also against Lord Tennyson’s visiting team of 1937-38.

Mian Saeed’s love affair with cricket had started during his college days at Government College Lahore. After graduation he was selected for the Punjab Civil Service and began a distinguished bureaucratic career. During World War 2 he joined the British Indian Army and was posted as a captain in the Army Intelligence Services at Cairo. His cricketing and civil service careers progressed in parallel after the war was over. Halcyon years saw him at the peak of his batting powers in the 1945-46 and 1946-47 seasons. When partition came he was a City Magistrate in Lahore and his official duties included escorting Hindu migrants to the Wagah border and enabling them to cross safely into India.

He played in the inaugural first-class match on Pakistani soil, captaining the Punjab side against a team representing Sind. Opening the batting with Nazar Mohammad, Mian Saeed scored 69 and led Punjab to an innings win. This was the first fifty scored in a first class match in Pakistan.

Benefitting from his administrative experience Mian Saeed along with Justice AR Cornelius and another seasoned bureaucrat, Syed Fida Hassan helped to establish the BCCP or the Board of Control for Cricket Pakistan.

In 1948, a star-studded West Indian side visited Pakistan. On a short detour from their trip of India they played an unofficial Test against Pakistan in Lahore. Led by John Goddard, the West Indian side included George Headley who was nicknamed the black Bradman and two of the three Ws, Clyde Walcott and Everton Weekes. While they were in India Lala Amarnath had led the West Indians to believe that the Pakistani team was just a schoolboys side. Mian Saeed was appointed the captain of the Pakistan team which also included many future Test stars like Nazar, Fazal Mehmood, Imtiaz Ahmed, Maqsood and Shujauddin.

Pakistan put up a very creditable performance, matching the touring team in all aspects of the game. Mian Saeed himself scored a century in the second innings and his second wicket partnership with Imtiaz which was worth 205 runs, was the first double century partnership for Pakistan in international cricket. The match was drawn but it established Pakistan’s credentials as a strong cricketing nation and initiated their quest for Test playing status.

In April 1949 Mian Saeed led the Pakistan team on its first overseas tour. Visiting Ceylon they played two Unofficial Tests defeating the home side comprehensively in both matches. Mian Saeed’s own contribution was a splendid innings of 93 in the first of these unofficial Tests.

Later that year a Commonwealth side led by the Australian Jock Livingston visited Pakistan. Frank Worrell was the only luminary in the team. The other players like John Holt of the West Indies and Bill Alley, Cec Pepper and George Tribe of Australia were either past their best or would never reach star status. Pakistan was surprisingly routed by this rather innocuous looking side as their batsmen were completely at sea against the right arm leg spin of Pepper and the unorthodox left arm leg spin of Tribe.

Following the match the crowd pelted the Pakistan team members with stones and verbal abuse, forcing them to leave through the back door of the pavilion in an ambulance. Some felt that the agitation by the spectators had been instigated by a clique that wished to oust Mian Saeed from the captaincy of the team.

Mian Saeed was, nevertheless, retained as the captain of the national side when Ceylon paid a return visit to Pakistan in March-April 1950. He ably led the side to a 2-0 victory against the visiting team, though his own performance was quite poor when judged by his personal high standards.

Mian Saeed was now getting on in years. He was 40 years old. A section of the Board wanted to appoint a younger player to lead the national side. The person they had in mind was Abdul Hafeez Kardar. A young Kardar had toured England with the Indian team in 1946, playing in all three Tests. He had befriended the team captain, the Nawab of Pataudi Senior, who used his contacts to get Kardar admission to Oxford University. Kardar played for the University as well as representing Warwickshire in county cricket.

Kardar was invited to play against the visiting Commonwealth team in 1949, but he declined citing an injured shoulder as the reason. Many thought that Kardar wanted the captaincy for himself and had declined because of this. Some even suspected him of being behind the crowd disturbance after Pakistan lost to the Commonwealth team but there was no evidence to substantiate this.

When Ceylon visited in 1950, Kardar was again invited to play and was even appointed as the vice captain under Mian Saeed. Kardar initially agreed to play but at the last moment he withdrew from the side saying that he had an injury and was proceeding to England.

The standoff between Mian Saeed and Kardar came to a head when the MCC team visited Pakistan in September 1951. Mian Saeed had led Pakistan with skill and success, winning four Unofficial Tests and drawing one. The only blemish on his record was the unexpected loss to the Commonwealth team. However, the selection committee, headed by Justice Cornelius, dropped him from the side for the series against the MCC and appointed Kardar as the new captain. While age may have been the major factor against Mian Saeed, many thought it was a coup against him led by Kardar with support from members of the Board.

Relations between Kardar and Mian Saeed remained strained. He was not selected for the Pakistan team to tour India in 1951-2, but did lead a Pakistan Eaglets team to the UK in 1952.

In 1954 fresh moves were made to appoint a 44 year old Mian Saeed as the captain of the Pakistan team to tour England that summer. Led by Fida Hassan, who was then the President of the Punjab Cricket Association, these moves perturbed Kardar sufficiently to approach the Defence Secretary. and future Governor General. Iskander Mirza to personally intervene. Mirza told the Board that the team would neither be issued passports nor foreign exchange if Kardar was not the captain. This brought the matter to a close.

The captaincy issue had been settled but animus in the relationship between Mian Saeed and Kardar continued. Mian Saeed’s son Yawar Saeed was an aspiring left arm pace bowler who was identified as a prospective player for the national side. However, he was repeatedly overlooked and many hold Kardar’s opposition to his selection as the reason for this. Yawar joined Somerset and played as an amateur for them against the touring Pakistan team in 1954.

Yawar recalls that when Pakistan won the Oval test against England on that tour, in the Pakistan dressing room on the final day were General Ayub Khan, General Azam Khan and both Mian Saeed and Yawar Saeed. According to Yawar, Kardar excluded Mian Saeed from the post-match celebrations.

In addition to a cricketing son Yawar, Mian Saeed also had a famous cricketer as his son-in-law. This was Pakistan’s ace bowler and match winner Fazal Mehmood who was married to Mian Saeed’s elder daughter. This was the same daughter who had designed the crest that became the original insignia of the BCCP, until it was changed in the 1960s.

Mian Saeed continued to play first class cricket till 1954-55. In 1953-54 he led a Punjab side that included both his son Yawar and his son-in-law Fazal, perhaps the only time that this has happened in the history of first-class cricket.

Mian Saeed managed Pakistan Eaglets team tours to England and was also the manager of the national side on its tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1965. His distinguished civil service career ended in 1968 as Additional Commissioner Rawalpindi, but he was soon re-employed for a few years as Secretary Thal Development Authority.

He suffered a stroke in 1974 and became wheelchair bound. In 1979 he passed away. Shortly before his death his nemesis Kardar paid him a visit. Neither of them spoke but Kardar had tears in his eyes when he left. At his well attended funeral Dr Jehangir Khan told his son Yawar, “He used to go in before me in every match. He would pad up and go in first. Now he’s gone and done it again.”

Dr Salman Faridi is a senior surgeon, poet, sports aficionado and an avid reader with a private collection of over 7000 books.

salmanfaridilnh@hotmail.com