The man who carried Peshawar to the world: From a boy in 1982 writing for a cricket magazine to the first Pakistani honoured with AIPS Lifetime Membership, a sports journalist’s journey has forever changed how this nation is heard
By Asher Butt
There is a voice that many Pakistanis of
a certain generation will remember without ever having seen the face behind it.
It was the voice that described a hockey match on Radio Pakistan—the crack of
the stick, the roar of the crowd, the breathless moment before a goal—and it
made you feel as though you were standing on the sideline yourself.
It was a time when sport entered
Pakistani homes not through high-definition television screens or instant
social-media updates, but through the familiar voice of a radio. Families
gathered around their radio sets, listeners imagined every pass and tackle, and
the excitement of international hockey travelled through the airwaves into
streets, shops and drawing rooms.
For thousands of sports enthusiasts,
those voices became inseparable from the memories of great matches. Among the
journalists who helped keep that tradition alive was Amjad Aziz Malik, a man
whose professional journey began when he was still a schoolboy and eventually
took him from the newspaper offices of Peshawar to the international platforms
of sports journalism.
His story is not merely about awards,
appointments or professional milestones. It is about persistence, the romance
of an earlier age of journalism, and the determination of a young man from
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to make his mark in a profession where credibility must be
earned one story at a time.
But to reduce Amjad Aziz Malik to a
commentator would be to miss the point entirely. His career, spanning more than
four decades, is a study in what happens when a person refuses to be confined
by a single title. He has been a reporter, an editor, an author of seventeen
books, a president of the Pakistan Sports Writers Federation, a Secretary
General of AIPS Asia, and—in April 2026—the first Pakistani sports journalist
in the 102-year history of the International Sports Press Association to be
awarded Lifetime Honorary Membership. He
has been, in every sense, a builder of the bridge between Pakistan’s sports
community and the world that so often overlooks it.
The boy from Peshawar
The story begins in Peshawar, a city
more readily associated in the global imagination with conflict than with
cricket or hockey. But it was there, in 1982, that a young Amjad Aziz Malik
began writing for Akhbar-e-Watan, a cricket magazine that gave him his first
byline. He was still a student
then—barely in the eighth grade, by some accounts—but the hunger was already
there.
He joined Daily Jiddat in 1985 as sports
editor, and in 1986 moved to Daily Jang, where he would spend sixteen years. Those were the years when Pakistani hockey
still commanded the nation’s attention, when the sport was not yet a memory of
glory but a living, breathing part of the national identity. Malik was there
for all of it. He covered the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games, the SAF Games,
the Islamic Games, the Indoor Asian Games, the Special Olympics, and the
Paralympics—a breadth of experience that few Pakistani journalists can claim.
But it was radio that made
him a household name. For sixteen years, he hosted a sports programme on Radio
Pakistan, and his hockey commentary became the gold standard of the medium. He
was adjudged the best commentator of Radio Pakistan for two consecutive years,
in 1999 and 2000, a recognition that reflected not just his technical knowledge
but his ability to make a listener feel the pulse of the game. For his acclaimed,
award-winning services, his portrait has been installed on the prestigious Wall
of Fame inside the museum at Radio Pakistan Peshawar in a simple yet
dignified ceremony, where Provincial Advisor on Information Samar Haroon Bilour unveiled the
portrait depicting Amjad Aziz Malik during a hockey commentary assignment.
The pen that would not rest
If the microphone gave Malik his voice,
the pen gave him his legacy. Over the course of his career, he has contributed
more than five thousand features, articles, and columns to the print media. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, he is the only
journalist to have authored seventeen books, with an eighteenth in the pipeline.
His books are not vanity projects. They
are acts of preservation. Football in Desert documented the 2022 FIFA World Cup
in Qatar, celebrating a moment when the Arab world welcomed the globe. Khushbu Ka Safar—"The Journey of
Fragrance"—chronicled fifteen years of the Malik Saad Shaheed Sports
Trust, an organisation that used sport to pull young people away from the pull
of militancy in the province and the tribal areas. In a region scarred by violence, Malik wrote
about the things that healed.
His output extends beyond books: over
three hundred research papers, fifty brochures and magazines on sports. The numbers are staggering, but they tell only
part of the story. What they do not capture is the discipline it takes to write
day after day, year after year, about a subject that the wider world often
treats as peripheral. Malik never treated it as peripheral. He treated it as
essential.
The diplomat of Asian sports journalism
Malik's influence was never confined to
Pakistan. In 2013, he won an Executive Committee seat of AIPS, the world body
of sports journalists, in an open election in Sochi, Russia. In 2016, he was elected unopposed as Secretary
General of AIPS Asia, representing thousands of sports journalists across the
continent. It was the first time a
Pakistani had been elected unopposed to such a position—a milestone that was
celebrated across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's media community and the country alike.
He would go on to serve three
consecutive terms in that role, cementing his position as one of the most
influential voices in Asian sports journalism. In 2019, the Nepal Sports Journalists Forum
honoured him with the inaugural Asian Sports Journalism Award at a ceremony in
Kathmandu attended by nearly fifteen hundred sports personalities. Malik
dedicated the award to the people of Pakistan, saying: "My room is full of
many awards, but this award is very special for me".
Then came April 2026. At the 88th AIPS
Congress in Lausanne, Switzerland, with representatives from 111 countries
gathered in the Olympic capital, Malik was elected a Lifetime Honorary Member
of AIPS—the first Pakistani in the organisation's 102-year history to receive
the distinction. He was one of six
veteran journalists from across the world recognised for outstanding services
to the global body. The Governor of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Faisal Karim Kundi,
congratulated him, calling it "a matter of pride not only for Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa but for the entire country".
The honour that was long overdue
In 2023, the Government of Pakistan
announced that Amjad Aziz Malik would receive the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz, the Medal of
Excellence, for his services to journalism. It was a historic recognition: the first time
in Pakistan's seventy-six-year history that a sports journalist had been
nominated by the federal government for a civil award.
The investiture ceremony was held on
March 23, 2024, at the Governor's House in Peshawar, where Governor Haji Ghulam
Ali conferred the award on Malik among fifty-nine citizens honoured that day. For a profession that has often been treated
as a footnote in Pakistan's media landscape, the moment carried symbolic
weight. Sports journalism, the award seemed to say, mattered. The people who
chronicled the nation's victories and defeats, who carried its stories to the
world, deserved to be recognised.
Malik accepted the honour with
characteristic humility, pledging to continue promoting the positive image of
Pakistan through his work.
Beyond the byline
What distinguishes Malik's career is not
merely its length or its list of accolades, but the breadth of its impact. He
has been a mentor to younger journalists, a advocate for the rights and
professional development of sports reporters, and a builder of institutions. As
president of the Pakistan Sports Writers Federation, he has worked to unite a
fragmented community and give it a collective voice.
His social welfare work is equally
significant. Through the Malik Saad Memorial Sports Trust, he distributed
sports equipment across the province and organised competitions for young
athletes. Through China Window, a cultural centre he established in Peshawar,
he has fostered understanding between Pakistan and its northern neighbour—a
centre that, by his own account, has been visited by over 450,000 people.
He is, in the fullest sense, a public
figure—not in the celebrity sense, but in the sense of someone who has devoted
his life to public good.
The voice that endures
Amjad Aziz Malik is now in his sixties,
but he shows no signs of slowing down. He continues to serve as Chief Editor of
Daily Kasoti and CEO of WE News. He remains President of the Pakistan Sports
Writers Federation. He remains a presence on the international stage,
representing Pakistani sports journalism with a dignity that the profession has
rarely been afforded.
His story is a reminder that the people
who shape a nation's sporting identity are not only the athletes who win
medals. They are also the men and women who tell their stories, who preserve
their histories, who carry their voices across borders and generations. Amjad
Aziz Malik has done all of this, and he has done it from Peshawar—a city that
the world often sees only through the lens of conflict, but which he has shown,
again and again, to be a place of eloquence, ambition, and grace.
For 268 hockey matches, his voice was
the soundtrack. For four decades, his pen was the record. And for the
generations of Pakistani sports journalists who will follow him, his life is
the blueprint.
