Syed Khalid Mahmood improves record for penning sports books

Jumbo Editorial Team

By bringing out Asian Glory, Syed Khalid Mahmood has improved his own record of having authoring the highest number of cricket books in Pakistan. Asian Glory happens to be his 14th book. He had earlier rewritten history of sorts by with the publication of Reflections-2 in 2011 which was his 13th book.

With the publication of Reflections in 2010, he had equalled the record of Aziz Rehmatullah, one of the doyens of cricket statisticians in Pakistan, who wrote exactly a dozen books on the most popular sport of the country.

Aziz Rehmatullah’s maiden title, 26 Years of Pakistan Cricket, was published in 1979 and his last book, Calendar Year’s Kings, came out in 2002. He also happened to be the editor of Cricket World Quarterly which lived a charmed life in the late 1970s and early 1980s before its abrupt closure.

In between he authored World Cricket Annual (1980), Cricket Close Up (1981), Pakistan Test Cricketers (1981), Masters of Cricket (1982), Who’s Who in Test Cricket (1984), An Eye on Test Cricket (1986), 35 Years of Pakistan Cricket (1987), The Book of One-day Internationals (1989), Pakistan in One-day Internationals (1996) and Who’s Who in One-day Internationals (2001).

Syed Khalid Mahmood debuted as a published author with Focus on World Cup in 1975-87 (1987) and has gone on to write The Caribbean Challenge (1989), Pakistan’s Triumph in World Cup 1992 (1993), Focus on World Cup 1975-92 (1993) Pakistan: The Land of World Champions (1995), Pakistan’s Sports Greats (1997), So Near Yet So Far (2000), Spotlight on World Cup 2003 (2005), Top of the Charts (2005), Mission Caribbean (2007), Cricket Fever (2008), Reflections (2010), Reflections-2 (2011) and Asian Glory (2012).  

Ehsan Qureshi, having pioneered the idea of publishing books on World Cup cricket tournaments, has authored eight books already and the ninth one is under publication.

He’s the author of The Book of One-day Internationals (1986), Pakistan Snooker Book (1991), World Cup 1992 (1993), World Cup 1996 (1997), World Cup 1999 (2000), World Cup 2003 (2004), Fiasco (2008) and Crash of the Titans (2011).