Wednesday, May 2, 2012

SKM equals Aziz Rehmatullah’s record of 12 sports books


By bringing out Asian Glory, Syed Khalid Mahmood (SKM) has equaled the record of A Aziz Rehmatullah, who’s believed to have held the record of authoring the highest number books on the subject of sports.  

The record is being now jointly held by Aziz Rehmatullah, one of the doyens of cricket statisticians in Pakistan, and Syed Khalid Mahmood, a prolific scribe and analyst, as both of them have a dozen books each to their credit.

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.

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 1987 and has gone on to write The Caribbean Challenge (1989), Pakistan’s Triumph in World Cup 1992 (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) 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).