In an exquisitely penned tribute to the former PCB Chairman, the Late Shaharyar Khan, veteran member @KB describes to us exactly why the former diplomat endeared himself to many generations of Pakistanis and why the void left by his departure will be felt for many years to come.

By KB (23 March 2024)

shahr-yar: “Possessor or lord of the city’; a king, a prince.”
John Platts, A dictionary of Urdu, classical Hindi, and English, 1884

In a world of increasingly entrenched tribalism, there is something refreshing about recalling Shaharyar Khan. An urbane figure, this was a man who brought people together.

Family history was one factor that shaped his cosmopolitan outlook.

Shaharyar Khan was born on 29th March 1934 and was a scion of royalty. His father - Sarwar Ali Khan - was the Nawab of Korwai State. His mother - Abida Sultan - was the heir apparent of the central Indian state of Bhopal until she migrated to Pakistan in 1950.

It is a remarkable fact that from the years 1819 to 1926, Bhopal was ruled for most of the years by Begums. It was a fact that clearly Shaharyar and his mother were deeply proud of. Abida Sultan began her piece for the magazine, History Today, in 1980 with the words:

“At a time when the revival of orthodox Islam and the status and role of Muslim women in modern society is capturing the attention of the world, the story of the Begums of Bhopal, and how during the last 200 years they overcame the prejudices, religious dogma and chauvinism of the period to play such a decisive and positive role in an otherwise male-dominated society, provides thought-provoking reading for the historian and sociologist.”

Shaharyar would himself go on to write a book on the topic: The Begums of Bhopal: A Dynasty of Women Rulers in Raj India. To his credit the book went beyond familial pieties.

The education he received and the places it took him, was another factor in moulding his cosmopolitanism. In 1945, he enrolled as a boarding student at the Royal Indian Military College in Dehradun. Of the period he states that: “You learned to live with people from Bengal, Madras and Punjab and know their customs and ways of life. The Sikh boys in our dormitory, had to get up half an hour earlier than the rest of us, in order to shampoo and wash their hair and tie it all up. We would observe all the Hindu and Sikh festivals at the gurudwara and the temple just as they would observe Ramzan, Eid and Eid-ul-Azha with us. In short, different cultures were living with each other.”

In 1948, he went to England to study and “learnt a lot on how different cultures performed as a result of the effects of post-World War crises which drove them to conserve and give up on pleasures. My great bridge to culture was spanned ultimately through sports. I was a good sportsman. In my first year at school at the age of 14 years, I was selected to play cricket for the school and became a hero.”

Shaharyar Khan joined the Foreign Service in 1957 and would remain with them until 1994, reaching the level of the most senior civil servant in the Foreign Ministry. He served as Pakistan’s high commissioner to the UK, a country that became a second home to him. Needless to say that a career as a diplomat required a high level of emotional intelligence and ability to build strong ties.

It was his cosmopolitanism, his skills of diplomacy and his connections that proved very useful when he came to serve as Chairman of Pakistan Cricket Board between 2003 and 2006. (He was also team manager on the tour to India in 1999).

Appointed by General Musharraf, his son - Ali Khan - quotes his father as saying, in relation to his appointment:

“I knew Musharraf cursorily when we visited Jordan when I was Ambassador there in the 1970s…He was also keen on engaging with India and I felt my appointment -as a civilian - was partly as a means of assuaging public criticism of the army taking so many key administrative positions and part out of his seeing me as a conduit for improving relations with India. I had been appointed previously as manager for the 1999 tour that Pakistan made to India, which was a a cricket and foreign relations success, at what at the time had been a tense India-Pakistan relationship. Like Zia, Musharraf was keen on cricket diplomacy.”

His tenure witnessed successful tours by India in 2004 and England in 2005 - both tours generating an enormous amount of goodwill. His family connections in India (his mother’s two younger sisters remained in India after partition with one marrying the Nawab of Pataudi) and the excellent rapport he had with Jagmohan Dalmiya helped in making the 2004 tour by India a success. It was also under Shaharyar Khan that the central contracts system was introduced. Although his tenure ended unhappily with the ball tampering controversy that marred the Oval Test of 2006, his period is generally remembered as one that brought stability to the game in Pakistan.

He returned as Chairman in 2014, serving until 2017. In this period, Zimbabwe became the first country to visit Pakistan following the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan team and the Pakistan Super League was inaugurated. Yet, his stamp was perhaps less visible in this period. He was overshadowed by Najam Sethi. And although he tried hard to foster closer relations with the Indian cricket board, the times had changed. His diplomatic skills and connections were no longer a match for the financial muscle of the Indian cricket board. For a man who had long argued that cricket could act as a “bridge of peace,” it was a sad denouement.

Whatever his family background, Shaharyar Khan was not a prince. He was something better: a man of integrity and decency, who believed in building bridges and not walls.