ISLAMABAD—There are presences, and then there are presences. Some arrive like tempests, loud, clamorous, desperate to be heard. Others, like Abdul Rasheed Shakoor, appear like the scent of ‘raat ki rani’ (night-blooming Jasmine) on a still night, not shouting, not seeking, simply there, and entirely unforgettable.
From Writer to Wordsmith: More Than Just Sports Reporting
To call Shakoor a sports journalist would be to call Mirza Ghalib a writer of letters, or Faiz Ahmad Faiz just a versifier of romantic woes. It would be a fact, yes, but painfully insufficient. He belonged not to the fraternity of reporters, but to a higher fellowship of aesthetes who chisel the mundane into the memorable. His keyboard moved not with typing, but with the slow-burning resolve of someone raised in a house where literature was not an ornament, but an heirloom; where books lay open like hands in prayer, and conversations circled like dervishes around the axis of thought.
A Literary Heritage: The Grandfather Who Shaped a Generation
His maternal grandfather, they say, read with a reverence usually reserved for scripture. It was not just bookshelves that filled the household, but languages. Urdu, English, and Gujarati, in his young ears, were not foreign tongues, but friends with distinct aromas. One spoke in the rustle of shayari (poetry), the other in the clipped elegance of Dickensian dialogue. The boy listened, absorbed, and, like all children in homes of literary fire, he began to burn quietly from within.
The Making of a Media Pioneer: Early Life and Influences
Rasheed Shakoor was born into the fragrance of books, faith, and print, the heir to a literary lineage where words were as sacred as bread. His father laboured quietly for a Parsee firm in Karachi, while his maternal grandfather, Usman Tayyab, known in the literary corridors of pre-partition India as Usman Shabnum, strode with conviction through the world of letters. At Rajkot, Shabnum sahib birthed a newspaper, Memon Bulletin, a fragile yet luminous flame of community thought. Mohammad Ali Jinnah himself advised him, with that stern clarity of vision, to rename it the Muslim Bulletin. The word ‘Muslim’ weighed in those years, a proclamation as much as a name. After partition, Shabnum sahib was entrusted with the Editor’s office of Dawn Gujarati and later became the first editor of Watan Gujarati, tied to the Adamjee group. He translated the sacred lives of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and of Ayesha (RA) into Gujarati, his writings steeped in reverence, and for these labours he received the Adamjee Award.
Formative Years: Surrounded by Scholars and Spiritual Leaders
His circle included the towering figures of faith, Mufti Mohammad Shafi, father of Mufti Taqi Usmani, and men of the judiciary and scholarship, such as Justice Tanzeel ur Rehman, Chief Justice of the Sharia Court, and Maulana Ehtesham ul Haq Thanvi. They were his companions, and in their company, Rasheed, still a child, wandered like a wide-eyed acolyte. He absorbed their frankness, their candour, their calm in the turbulence of life.
Overcoming Adversity: The Path to Journalism Excellence
But Rasheed’s own path soon turned rough. He was drawn first to sport, the cricket field tugging at his imagination, yet even as a student, he wrote letters to editors about civic and social concerns. Then came personal calamity: his father lost employment, and the shock felled him with a brain haemorrhage, confining him to bed. Economic hardship descended like a permanent dusk. Rasheed, still young, was forced into maturity. He sought solace in his grandfather’s books, shelves laden with the scent of history and religion, each page an unseen mentor.
The Book Collector: Building Knowledge Through Literature
Khori Garden’s bookstalls became his sanctuaries. With his meagre pocket money, he purchased what treasures he could, his first, the 1975 Pakistan Cricketers’ Annual for Rs. 4.50. From there began his lifelong affair with books. He wrote to Sportspages in the United Kingdom, importing volumes that fed his curiosity. Later, working at the Hurriat newspaper from 1983 to 1989, he frequented the Memon bookseller on Bans Road. There, in 1985, for Rs. 25, he purchased Iqbal Qasim’s autobiography. These books were not just read; they became lifelines, anchors against despair.
Mastering Urdu: The Language That Defined His Career
Rasheed’s tastes widened. He revelled in travelogues, in the quaint prose of Mustansir Hussain Tarar, in the satire of Ibrahim Jalees and Ibn-e-Insha, in the colloquial charms of Akhtar Mamooka. His Urdu, both spoken and written, was burnished not only by this immersion in literature but also by his immersion in the pressrooms of Karachi. He began as a proofreader at Hurriat and was later mentored by the meticulous Shafi Naqi Jami. To this day, Shafi Naqi Jami remarks that one must be cautious with their Urdu in front of Abdul Rasheed Shakoor, despite being a Memon, so sharp is his ear, so exacting his standard.
Professional Development: Mentors and Influences
Others nurtured him too: Yousaf Usmani recalls Shakoor and the encouragement of Hurriat’s editor, Afsar Aazar. Mohammad Naqi, the producer at Radio Pakistan, lent him guidance and companionship. From these influences, Rasheed emerged not only as a journalist but as a craftsman of words, a custodian of culture. Thus, Shakoor’s story is not just of a man but of a lineage: of Shabnum sahib’s bold print in Rajkot, of a boy wandering through Karachi’s old book markets, of struggle endured and knowledge distilled. He grew from a child watching giants of faith at his grandfather’s side to a man carrying his own quiet authority, a lover of cricket and literature, and above all, of the written word as salvation.
The Gentle Giant: Character and Professional Ethics
Yet, unlike many prodigies of prose who display early symptoms of literary ambition with pomposity, Shakoor’s beginnings were as unassuming as a monsoon drizzle. He started young, yes, but youth was never loud in him. Even as a cub reporter, there was something in him that seemed ancient, not old, but timeless. A clarity of focus, a simplicity in manner, morality and work ethics, that never lost its true north.
Cricket Press Box Chronicles: The Art of Sports Journalism
In the press boxes of the cricketing world, often hotbeds of sarcasm and satire, Shakoor stood apart. Not by declaration, but by presence. He was congeniality itself, dressed not in arrogance but in civility’s finely tailored coat. He never laughed at someone, always with them. His humour, that effervescent breeze in the stiff-collared atmosphere of professional sport, never cut, only nudged. It was never acidic, always alkaline. Where others might have sharpened their barbs, he polished his wit.
The Paradox of Gentle Writing: Sharp Prose from a Kind Soul
Yet, and this is the delightful contradiction of his craft, his writings were no gentle breeze. It was a switchblade in his hand. His writing carried a weight, a moral seriousness, and a fearlessness that surprised those who met him only in person. Gentle in demeanour, devastating in prose, his match reports were scalpel-sharp, unafraid, unsparing. When mediocrity dared present itself on the field, Shakoor did not placate. He reported, dissected, and at times, demolished, but never without reason, never without poise.
Cricket as Poetry: The Cardusian Influence on Pakistani Sports Writing
He had, in the best tradition of Neville Cardus and Ahmad Nadim Qasmi, that rare ability to see cricket not just as a sport but as theatre, even lyricism. A cover drive, in his sentences, became a calligraphic sweep across green parchment. A dropped catch, a Greek tragedy. The pauses in a day’s play, that long silence between a bowler’s run-up and a batsman’s reply, he treated with the reverence of a classical raga’s khayal unfolding. There was rhythm in his realism, lyric in his logic.
Professional Standards: The Hallmark of Excellence
And yet he was, through and through, a professional. In the deepest, noblest sense of the word. Punctual to a fault, precise in attribution, and fastidious in facts. There was no room in his columns for embellishments unearned, no crutches of rumour, no shortcuts through half-truths. His loyalty lay with the reader, and his only allegiance was to the game as it should be, played honourably, reported honestly.
Observing the Soul of Sport: Beyond Statistics
There’s an image that comes to mind, of Shakoor, in a rickety press box in Faisalabad, mid-winter, thermos at his feet, sleeves rolled, eyes squinting against a hazy sun as he scribbled, cross-referenced, and re-scribbled. Others chatted idly, took naps between overs, and scrolled absently through their phones. He watched, always. Not just the game, but the moment. A misfield on the boundary was not only a lapse, it was an opening into character. A captain’s decision to bring on a spinner in the 43rd over was not just strategy; it was psychology. He saw the soul of sport, not just its statistics.
The Human Touch: Building Relationships in Sports Journalism
But it was outside the formalities of reporting, in the cracks and interludes that his true warmth blossomed. In chai-stained cups passed between innings. In quiet anecdotes shared under tube-lights flickering with the fatigue of late hours. In light-hearted banter laced not with ego but with elegance. ‘Woh umpire ki nazar kamzor thi, yaa irade mazboot?’ he once joked after a particularly questionable LBW decision, and the laughter that followed wasn’t loud, but long. That was Shakoor: never thunder, always rainfall.
Legacy of Excellence: Remembering a Master Craftsman
It is easy to be remembered for one’s writing. Far harder to be remembered for one’s manner. Shakoor, somehow, managed both. To the young in the field, he was a mentor without condescension. To peers, a friend without competition. To cricketers, a relator, a raconteur they could trust. And to readers, he was a steady companion across decades, holding up a mirror not just to the game, but to the times.
His passing (for every luminous candle must one day flicker) left not an emptiness, but a longing, a void not just of a voice, but of a way. The way he carried himself, the way he listened with intention, the way he wrote with fire but walked with grace. In the end, what remains of a man? Not his clippings, not his bylines, but the scent he leaves behind in contemporary journalism and is still active on digital media, in memory, in mentorship, in the moral clarity of his work. Abdul Rasheed Shakoor hasn’t scaled monuments of marble. But in the hearts of those who know him, read him, and laughed alongside him, he remains a lighthouse. Always lit.
The Early Years: First Steps into Journalism (1979-1980)
Before the world knew Abdul Rasheed Shakoor as a journalist, before dispatches and bylines and the hum of printing presses, the earliest strains of his voice were mentioned in the hush of mornings yet to be, lingering in the quiet before dawn’s first breath. In 1979, a young man newly emerged from the cradle of schoolboy dreams felt within himself the stirring promise of a chronicler. Cricket, more than just a sport, pulsed in the blood of nations; it captivated him with its dynamics and the making of a pitch and the bat, the arc of a ball shaping not only through the air but through the heart, describing poetry in motion.
He had not yet crossed the threshold of college, yet already the impulse to write lived in him, first offerings drafted in pen on the fragile, clean pages of a notebook, the scent of paper mingling with anticipation. And then, in June of that same year, his first tender byline unfurled in Akhbar e Watan. Imagine that name, Abdul Rasheed Shakoor, glowing in modest print beneath the broadsheet’s lights. One can almost sense the quickening of his heart, the brightness in his eyes, that humble pride that precedes success, the kind that pours into every line the wild potency of possibility.
Then came 1980, when college corridors beckoned, but necessity summoned him beyond academe into the world of The Cricketer Pakistan. As a student he carried textbooks under one arm and, beneath the other, the weight of responsibility to family. Amid lectures and library hours, he slipped into editorial rooms, helping with typographical layouts, listening to editorial conversations, absorbing the discreet melody of a newsroom at work. There he was young, eager, writing not for glory but for bread, to support those he held dear.
The Cricketer Pakistan Years: Building Foundation (1983)
Between 1983, under the banner of The Cricketer, Pakistan, he wrote, each sentence gaining sinew through discipline of deadlines. The afternoon pressure shaped him steadily, like a batsman tending to his crease, swinging into the rhythm of ball on wood. And the words themselves echoed with cricket’s music, the crack of willow, the swish of silk, the applause that reverberated like distant thunder.
Daily Huriyat Karachi: The Formative Years (1983-1990)
Then, in 1983, his pen migrated to Daily Huriyat Karachi, where he remained until 1990. Karachi, a city of wind and salt, of heat and a human surge, emerged as his verse’s rich landscape. Streets streaked with sand, markets teeming, mornings gilded by an imperfect sun, evenings that seemed always too brief. At Huriyat, his craft deepened, like the shifting tide slipping in and out of Karachi’s harbor. The desks, the pressing of print runs, the unspoken camaraderie of copy editors and typesetters, all churned beneath his fingers. He learned not only to write, but to speak in the voice of the city, to absorb the rhythmic breathing of Karachi cricket, its parks and nets, weekend tournaments, the hush before ball release, the roar after edge.
In those years, he may have covered matches that left indelible marks upon his soul, the Pilkington Cup in backyard nets, local legends whose names now reside in half-forgotten memory, the untold talent of up-and-comers whose first printed footfalls he recorded with the care of a midwife naming a newborn. He became Karachi’s own cricketing lyricist, drafting stories that sang with the city’s heartbeat.
Daily Pakistan: Expanding Horizons (1991-1998)
Then, in 1991, his path shifted, no longer confined to Karachi alone, but stretching across the twin capitals as he joined Daily Pakistan, writing from both Lahore and Islamabad. The shift was more than geographic; it was tonal, atmospheric. Lahore, with its Mughal arches and shrines shimmering in silver, the qawwali drifting over the River Ravi. Islamabad, a city in orderly grids, green avenues and whitewashed buildings beneath reflective pools, structured, stately, yet fresh. From 1991 to 1998, his byline took on panoramic grandeur, merging tradition’s warmth with progress’s precision.
In Lahore, he might have walked through ancient bazaars before heading to Gaddafi Stadium, inhaling saffron and spices, then settling under match lights where bowlers pirouetted, batsmen shaped strokes like sculptors. In Islamabad, he might pause by the Margalla Hills, pondering angles and grips, how one’s stance shifts with conditions, literal terrain, and metaphorical plotting. His prose, which Neville Cardus would have cited for its sensuous description, depicted a pacy bowler’s swing as choreography, a shot’s flourish as lyrical. Language sketched pitches; weather was annotated with empathy; cricket in his columns acquired soul.
Return to Karachi: Daily Express Years (1998-2003)
Yet Karachi’s attraction endured. In 1998, he returned to the Daily Express Karachi, where he stayed until 2003. Karachi reclaimed him, its chaos familiar, its cacophony beloved, its salty breath-enriching his narratives. There, the seasoned journalist turned city-drenched poet, writing not only of sport, but of the human tides abating beneath it.
Stories took on dimension: groundsmen coaxing pitches into shape under moonlight, spectators drenched in the hope of centuries, boys playing tape ball in sun baked lanes, radio announcers calling matches from balconies, as pulse and persistence and poetry collided. One can sense memory’s gambit here: a press gallery humming with activity, an empty press office once headlines drop, the paper’s first morning pickup with still wet ink, corners folded where his article rested, legs crossed on a verandah with steaming tea in hand. Karachi’s everyday beauty and the eruption of drama on the pitch fused inside his narrative.
Radio Pakistan: The Voice That Reached Hearts
But the black and white columns of city papers were not his only medium. Into the airwaves, he lent his voice as part of Radio Pakistan’s Aalami Sports Round Up. Radio, a mystical realm without images, without headlines, only sound, silence, and the hush of listeners leaning forward in kitchens, buses, sleeping quarters, transistor radios clutched beneath blankets. There, Abdul Rasheed spoke. One can imagine his timbre, warm, gentle, cadenced to rise and fall like a measured stroke. Through him, pitches and players became companions in the mind; crowds were heard, smelled; the roughness of the ball being polished, the whisper of theory in strategy, the hush before stroke, all became sensorial. That voice on the radio was a private compass for each listener and yet tied them to others; it carried memories across cities, through canopies, and to farmhouses, homes where cricket binds generations, where fathers and sons gathered under transistor light. The round-up delivered more than scores; it whispered dreams.
BBC Urdu Service: Three Decades of Excellence (1993-Present)
And then came the turning point, subtle yet seismic, in 1993, when he began freelance journalism with BBC Urdu Service, a moment of depth that unfurled across thirty years thereafter. Freelance carried no salary, but it promised autonomy, a stage to shape reportage with latitude. Perhaps he saw therein a window to world-class journalism, politics, cricket, stories reaching continents, the silent seal of credibility. He pitched, revised, faced rejection, persisted. And from those fragile roots grew permanence, a full-time position, and a 30-year odyssey that, as of 2025, remains unforgettable.
Thirty years: consider time as a test match, its overs vast and elusive. Thirty years is a Test played across decades, day one to day hundred, tea breaks, final sessions, close of play and yet, that match persists. His journey with BBC is still unfolding, still bearing witness. In that time, he built his voice into the digital corpus of Urdu journalism, his tone steady, warm, informed, the one readers and listeners come to rely on. ‘Ah,’ they might say, ‘an article by Abdul Rasheed,’ and know they are in the hands of nuance, empathy, substance. His professional passage is not merely a career, it is soulful.
Tournament Coverage: A Global Sports Chronicler
And what a journey it has been. To read his story is to trace the arcs of modern cricket and sporting life. He covered tournaments that shaped the game’s global narrative: Cricket World Cups, 1987, 1996, 2003, 2011, 2015, 2019, each tournament a world unto itself. One sees 1987’s first subcontinental World Cup under local suns and floodlights; 1996’s blaze of flame and festival, Indian and Pakistani crowds shouting in unison; 2003’s South African plains and Caribbean breeze; 2011 and 2015’s technology set stage and globe stretching spectacle; 2019’s tournament poised at the edge of global disruption, stadiums still bright even as the world braced for change.
He witnessed T20 World Cups, 2007, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2022, and an explosive surge into fast-paced revolutions of format. T20 became cricket’s fireworks, the shortest form, the collective gasp spun in six ball bars; a commentator had to sprint, words had to stretch with surprise, cheering trimmed neatly by brevity. In Asia Cups, 1995, 2004, 2008, 2010, 2018, he navigated regional pride and ritual; each tournament had flavor: the slow heat of Lahore 1995, rivalry matured by 2004, high definition production by 2008, stars rising in 2010, modern geopolitics framing 2018.
Beyond Cricket: Diverse Sports Coverage
The SAF Games of 1989 and 2006 took him into spheres less common yet rich in story, sporting camaraderie across South Asia, often overshadowed by politics but lit by personal triumphs in those quieter stadiums. At the 2012 London Olympics, he left cricket behind momentarily to embrace sport writ grander, the torch, pageantry, and athletes’ dreams given corporeal time. His keyboard and voice recorded the sprinter’s second long hesitation, the swimmer’s first tumble turn breath, the coach’s expression susurration, ‘You’ve done well.’
He entered compressed drama in the World Open Squash championships, 1993, 1996, where glass courts echoed the rebound of balls, players’ lungs and exhaustion painted in physical print, racquets drawn like musical instruments, and he shaped reportage into tight, rhythmic narratives.
In World and Asian Snooker Championships, he absorbed the hush, the arcs, the angles, the green baize, chalk, tactility, possibilities colliding with precision and the tremor of concentration, and spun that dissonance into literary calm. And beyond, the expanse of over four hundred international cricket matches, Test, ODI, T20. Four hundred-plus matches, each its own canvas. The five-day sagas under sun and dew, floodlit one day theatres, T20 burst reservoirs of sixes. Each demanded pitch report detail, player interviews, post-match breakdowns, historical framing, anecdotal texture, captain’s voice, umpire’s globe, and a journalist’s mind balancing statistics with the human heartbeat. That figure, more than a number, is a mosaic.
The Art of Match Reporting: Four Hundred Stories
Each match a tile colored with weather, crowd mood, strategy, personality, and anecdote. From swing spells to psychological battles, final over furies to shepherded chases, erupting celebrations, he archived them all. His memory of each game must function as a scrapbook: the first ball in a lifetime match, the first Test, the first T20, the latest World Cup; practice session breezes before dawn, small confrontations in press galleries, tea break revelations, trophies raised, press statements delivered, wrap-up lines typed late at night through fatigue and exhilaration.
And yet, the story is still far from over. This journey, starting in a student’s humble notebook in 1979, carried through Karachi’s bustling pressrooms, through the hues of Lahore and the stateliness of Islamabad, into the magnetism of radio, and then into the global broadcasting firmament of BBC Urdu, has become literature of sport. Each sentence springs like a crease, each paragraph an over, each article a full match. The life of Abdul Rasheed Shakoor is not chronological alone; it is musical, layered, symphonic. A life written in cricket seasons, stadium atmospheres, airwaves, ink, and devotion. A life that mirrors the arc of the game itself: from red ball dawns to Twenty20 sunset lightning.
Broadcasting Excellence: The Voice of BBC Urdu
Some broadcasters speak. Abdul Rasheed Shakoor pronounced. In a world of hurried headlines and breathless commentary, he brought to the airwaves a diction sculpted as if by hand, and a rhythm as deliberate and textured as a raag in slow vilambit. His voice on BBC Urdu was not just a delivery of news; it was a performance, a composition, and conviction. One did not merely listen to Shakoor; one absorbed him. Within the formal scaffolding of a globally revered institution, Shakoor moved like a master craftsman. The language was Urdu, yes, but the sensibility was Cardusian, elegant, refined, and never rushed. Where others might tumble over names and headlines, he would pause, lightly, thoughtfully making space for language to breathe. Talafuz (pronunciation) mattered to him as it might to a ghazal singer: not an accessory, but the very soul of the message.
Commitment to Truth: The Statistician’s Heart
Unlike many of his contemporaries who bathed in the warm waters of opinion and hyperbole, Shakoor sought refuge in the cold, clear river of fact. He was a statistician at heart, a lover of records, timelines, and verification. Each assertion had to be confirmed, every scoreline rechecked, every date run through a fine-toothed comb of editorial diligence. He called often, not out of doubt, but out of devotion to accuracy. It was as if the truth had to pass not just through sources but through Shakoor’s personal court of confirmation before it could be aired.
This, of course, made him a broadcaster’s broadcaster. Colleagues adored him, not because he pandered (he never did) or played politics (he loathed it), but because he was straight. Disarmingly so. In a field often clouded by professional rivalries, his transparency was almost startling. He would say what he meant, and he meant only what he could stand by.
The Art of Writing: Constructing Literary Miniatures
And always, always, there was the writing. When Shakoor wrote, he did not file reports; he constructed miniature minsters. Every phrase bore the weight of care. There was an old-school poise in his script, an aversion to ornament for its own sake, and a gentle disdain for the flamboyant flourish. One might say he translated Cardus’s literary lyricism into Urdu’s velvet folds, anchoring every flourish in fact, and every fact in feeling.
Second Innings: YouTube Success and Continuing Legacy
Though he has now stepped away from daily broadcasting, Shakoor’s heart still beats for journalism. It is not a profession for him; it is his element, as natural to him as air or silence. Retirement has brought no retreat, only a shift. He now curates books the way he once curated words. Every week, a new title, a new treasure, each shared with that same enthusiasm, that same boyish spark that made his cricket coverage so alive. In a landscape where noise often masquerades as voice, Abdul Rasheed Shakoor remains a quiet, unwavering signal. Already, one of the post-retirement ventures, his YouTube show ‘Second Innings’ has begun to attract traction. A true original.
Dr. Nauman Niaz is a civil award winner (Tamagha-i-Imtiaz) in Sports Broadcasting & Journalism, and is the sports editor at JournalismPakistan.com. He is a regular cricket correspondent, having covered 54 tours and three ICC World Cups, and having written over 3500 articles. He has authored 15 books and is the official historian of Pakistan Cricket (Fluctuating Fortunes IV Volumes – 2005). His signature show, Game On Hai, has been the highest in ratings and acclaim.
