In 1967 I was made captain of the Karachi Cricket Association to play in the inter-board tournaments in Pakistan. As my reputation grew, cricket began opening doors. One of the most important people I ever met was a man named Saddat Ali. Everyone called him "bhaijan", meaning "older brother". He became one of the most influential figures in my early cricketing life, seeing something in me before almost anyone else did. At the time I was just another talented young batsman with big dreams but he believed I could become much more.
He owned a motorcycle and would arrive at my house to collect me. I would climb onto the back and we would travel across Karachi in search of cricket. Those journeys changed my life. There were days when it felt as if I spent more time batting than doing anything else. For a young player, there could be no greater gift.
He was involved with dozens of clubs throughout the city. On some days we would arrive at a ground where I would score a century. Most people would think that was enough for one day. Not Saddat Ali. He would tell me to get back on the motorcycle.
"We are going somewhere else."
Then we would arrive at another club.
"Go and bat."
Sometimes I scored another century.
One club in particular, Park Crescent, played a major role in my development. At the time it was one of Karachi's strongest clubs. The first time I arrived there, around the age of 16, nobody knew who I was. I was wearing sandals and did not even have proper cricket shoes with me as I was not expecting to play.
The established players were reluctant to give batting opportunities to an unknown youngster but late in the practice session, one of my friends persuaded them to let me have a turn.
Someone lent me their shoes and that simple act changed everything. I walked out to bat and after a bit, the session should have ended but nobody wanted to stop. The light began to fade and still nobody called time. I remember thinking to myself, "Why are they not stopping me?" Forty minutes later people were still watching. Eventually I walked over to one of the senior figures at the club.
He asked me which club I played for and when I said I didn't play anywhere, he asked me if I was joking, as a batsman who could play like that must belong somewhere. But this was the first club where I had ever had a practice session.
That day marked the beginning of my journey through serious cricket. Without contracts, agents, paperwork or long negotiations, I became part of Park Crescent's first team. In those days cricket still operated on trust - a club registered you, you gave your word, and that was enough. It was one of many things Pakistan had inherited from British cricket culture, an emphasis on honour, respect and fair play.
Suddenly I was no longer simply a schoolboy playing wherever I could find a game. I belonged to one of Karachi's strongest clubs. Soon afterwards, cricket equipment manufacturers started providing me with bats.
The standard of the bowling varied and so did the wickets but I scored many hundreds. I don't remember many specifically but there was one for Park Crescent which must have been good because there was a picture of me in the paper next day!
If there was one thing I knew how to do as a young cricketer, it was score runs. That sounds arrogant when I say it now, but it never felt that way at the time. I wasn't counting records or thinking about fame. I wasn't dreaming about newspaper headlines or imagining being called the "Asian Bradman". I just loved batting. Give me a bat, a ball and enough daylight, and I was happy. The runs just seemed to come.
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There did come a point in my teenage years where I accepted that I should put cricket aside and obtain a university degree. I worked out that history would be easier for graduation and completed a BA course at Islamia College and for a number of years hardly picked up a bat. I felt a responsibility to my parents.
I did have some time for cricket, though, while studying for my degree. And the runs I had scored for Park Crescent brought bigger opportunities. The Pakistan Works Department invited me to play for them and I impressed in the various national tournaments, so much that Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) asked me to join them, starting a long and profitable partnership as both player and captain. In Pakistan during those years, many major organisations had cricket teams and the strongest players would be recruited by departments and corporations who competed against each other in domestic tournaments.
PIA was among the most powerful teams and was much more than an airline. It was one of the great institutions of Pakistan, and its cricket team was packed with international players. To be associated with PIA was considered a major achievement for any young cricketer. When I joined them, I was still a teenager.
I initially imagined I would be working in an office before going off to bat but the reality was very different. My job was basically playing cricket. PIA employed players because they wanted to win trophies. We received a salary and represented the organisation on the field. Later in life I would hold official positions within PIA, but as a young cricketer my responsibility was straightforward - to score runs. Which suited me perfectly.
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I began playing first-class cricket for Karachi and PIA, and the hundreds started to come. On my seventh first-class appearance, I think, for Karachi against East Pakistan in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, I scored the first of my eventual 108 hundreds, 197 batting at No. 7. To give an idea of the quality, our team was captained by Hanif Mohammad and contained Asif Iqbal, Wasim Bari and Salahuddin. The last of those players scored a double-hundred and a hundred in the match, perhaps subconsciously giving me something to aim at!
But many of my hundreds I cannot recall. Some cricketers can remember every innings, every bowler, every boundary. I am not like that. I remember certain innings vividly, especially in Test cricket, but many of my domestic hundreds have merged together over time. There were simply so many matches and so many runs. But what I do remember is what happened after every century. Whenever I reached a hundred, whether in first-class or Test cricket, I would spend time alone quietly in prayer.
I never wanted anyone to know, so at the end of the day I would go somewhere by myself and offer thanks to God. I would repeat the prayer a hundred times, one prayer for every run in the hundred.
It usually took about an hour and my father did exactly the same thing - if I scored a century, he would also offer a hundred prayers of thanks. Gradually my father accepted that I would never wear a doctor's white coat. In fact he would even sit on a chair in front of the government quarters after office hours and watch me practise. He was a good sportsman and loved football but had never been a cricketer so there was no parental coaching.
By the time I had progressed from school cricket and the village matches of Sialkot to the club grounds of Karachi, batting had become as natural to me as breathing. I wasn't a product of coaching manuals or cricket academies. In those days, such things barely existed in Pakistan anyway.
Sometimes I wonder whether that lack of coaching was an advantage. Nobody told me what I couldn't do or tried to change my natural way of playing.
My style was all my own. I developed it on my own initiative. I watched the greats of the day and subconsciously may have been influenced by them but I tried to avoid copying anyone.
I learned through instinct, through repetition and most of all, by playing. From morning until evening, if there was cricket somewhere, I wanted to be there.
This is a lightly edited extract from From A to Zed: A Life in Cricket by Zaheer Abbas, Fairfield Books, 2026