Vin­ode Mam­chan

Ever so of­ten some­one comes along to give a much-need­ed in­jec­tion to sports the world over. Crick­et's turn has ar­rived in the form of Mo­ham­mad Ahmed Qureshi. Re­cent­ly on my trip to Fort Laud­erdale to cov­er the ex­ploits of T&T's T20 team against the Ja­maicans, I met this very unas­sum­ing man sit­ting in the pres­i­dent's box, tak­ing in the game. I was point­ed out to him and with a warm smile he greet­ed me and told me he loved crick­et and was a ser­vant of the game.

I lat­er got from him his past, cur­rent and fu­ture as­pi­ra­tions for the game, we all love. Qureshi, al­so known as "Maq," mi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States in 1984 with lit­tle to no means-but he had big dreams. With a strong work eth­ic and lim­it­less de­ter­mi­na­tion, he is now the pres­i­dent and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer (CEO) of a suc­cess­ful cor­po­ra­tion, MAQ Group, Inc, one of the largest re­al es­tate in­vest­ment and fi­nan­cial groups in the Unit­ed States. MAQ Group has en­joyed great suc­cess by spe­cial­is­ing in high-pro­file com­mer­cial re­al es­tate in­vest­ments, fi­nanc­ing, de­vel­op­ment, man­age­ment and con­sult­ing.

MAQ Group al­so spe­cialised in de­vel­op­ing and main­tain­ing fast food fran­chis­es and gas sta­tions through­out the state of Flori­da. MAQ Group owns trade­marked brands, such as PetroAmer­i­ca, Sub­co, Su­per­Stop and Bizder. MAQ Group al­so main­tains many sig­nif­i­cant, na­tion­al-scale re­la­tion­ships with BP Oil, Shell Oil, Hess, Chevron, CIT­GO, Marathon and Suno­co, among oth­ers.Ten years ago, Maq's pas­sion for crick­et led him to per­son­al­ly cre­ate a pri­vate sports and en­ter­tain­ment com­pa­ny named "Crick­et Coun­cil USA." With busi­ness and three kids whom he spends much of his time with, the "busi­ness" of crick­et has be­come an in­te­gral part of both his pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al life. Maq has held count­less crick­et tour­na­ments through­out the Unit­ed States in­clud­ing Texas, Flori­da, New Jer­sey, Con­necti­cut and New York known as the "MAQ T20 Tour­na­ments." Maq has brand­ed a T20 lo­go and tag line as well as a line of en­er­gy drinks and a cloth­ing/gear line sur­round­ing the hype for the short-ac­tion packed game. Maq has al­so been a long time sup­port­er of the on­ly on­go­ing T20 Night Crick­et Tour­na­ment in the Unit­ed States-the "City of Lauder­hill Maq T20 In­ter­na­tion­al Night Crick­et Tour­na­ment" in the City of Lauder­hill, Flori­da (Crick­et cap­i­tal of the US). He wants the game to grow in his new home, just as it is in his land of birth Pak­istan. MAQ is not afraid of pump­ing his funds in­to crick­et de­vel­op­ment and has even man­aged the US crick­et teams on oc­ca­sions.

His love for the game is ev­i­dent he is over­joyed that crick­et is fi­nal­ly tak­ing off in the US. As a mat­ter of fact it was Qureshi who start­ed the T20 for­mat way back in 1998 in the US. The Eng­land and Wales Crick­et Board (ECB) has been cred­it­ed for bring­ing on stream the T20 for­mat be­cause their crick­et is or­gan­ised but Qureshi was one who start­ed it. Ac­cord­ing to him: "There was this need to get the at­ten­tion of the peo­ple here fo­cussed on crick­et. I could not tell them that you have to play the game for five days to get a re­sult. "So I thought that three hours was a good time to get in a match and then worked back­wards to set­tle on 20 overs per side. "This was great in­deed and we start­ed play­ing it here. Now I have the US?Open tak­ing place and I am of­fer­ing a top prize of US$100,000." The US?Open has 64 teams par­tic­i­pat­ing in the tour­na­ment and teams from all around the world has tak­en part in the se­ries. This has cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of a num­ber of Amer­i­cans and the youths out­side the Asian and West In­di­an dis­apo­ras are now car­ry­ing around bats-thanks to MAQ.