wow - monday morning and a great thread taking us down memory lane!
a bit of cricketing trivia is the legacy of the shirazi/shah family. maybe not as well remembered these days, but these guys had a great cricket tradition that ran in the family. of course nazim was famous but left the bangladesh scene too early. his brother, kazim, played in the dhaka league and at some point was wicket keeper at azad boys. now, their cousins were even more famous - the shah brothers - let's see, everyone knows jahangir shah badshah, then there were his brothers halim shah, nazir shah, and a fourth brother? - help me out here, tpsultan, maybe i am butchering some of the names. One of them is an umpire in domestic cricket, you will see his name on scorecards.
i don't know if any other family has produced that many top class cricketers in bangladesh.
of these guys, kazim and i were classmates and friends. we hung with an eclectic group that came out of greenherald - shubho/sagar (those in LA may have run into them in the last couple of decades), and another unique bunch of part-time cricket players - the Shanghai and King Hwa bangladeshi-chinese boys, including Brian Liu and Lewis. Lewis was way over 6' and i believe played as a fast bowler for second div teams. i think this is interesting because for a while we had a few chinese-bangladeshi cricket players - don't know how many chinese people are left in bangladesh, hope the younger generation is still playing.
nazim went to my school, but he was a couple of classes down so we didn't hang together much. i had the privelege of being on the same cricket field as him on occasion, but my main job was tankibaji, chapabaji, and assorted smokables. actually i don't remember much of the cricket, but i do remember the hoi-choi getting there, making sure we always had the girls in the crowd, the hanging out at the burger joints afterwards, and the many one ball ducks i scored.
tpsultan, if you have kazim's phone number, i would appreciate if you could mail me at
rahmed111@attbi.com, haven't talked to him in years and would love to catch up.
thanks and sorry for the rambling message