Saqib Mahmood (cricketer, born 1977)

Raja Zakaria Saqib Mahmood Janjua (born 24 August 1977) more commonly known as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood played first-class cricket for Somerset in 1999.^[1] He was born at Kettering, Northamptonshire.

Mahmood was a right-handed lower-middle-order batsman and a right-arm leg-break, top spinner and googly bowler. Having played for Essex schools from childhood, Mahmood rose to eventually represent Essex 2nd XI in 1997 and 1998. He was famously targeted by Nasser Hussain, the then England Test team’s vice-captain to train with England during the 1997 Ashes series to prepare against the threat of Shane Warne. Mahmood trained with the England team in Tests held at Edgbaston, Lords and The Oval. Mahmood was a prodigy of Joe Hussain, Nasser Hussain’s father and was a graduate of Ilford Cricket School under Joe’s guardianship. Mahmood played overseas grade cricket in Lahore, Pakistan playing for , a club renowned for producing various Pakistani test cricketers notably Abdul-Razzak, Saeed Anwar, Imran Nazir, , Ashraf Ali, Aamir Nazir and Imran Tahir and a string of notable first-class cricketers including Aleem Dar.

After an impressive start to his 2nd XI career at the west country county, Mahmood was elevated to the first team to play against the visiting New Zealand team however, he only played one first-class game having sustained a chronic injury to his neck from a blow to the lower head, whilst partaking a net practice 48-hours before his first-class debut. The ensuing concussion went undetected by the medical staff at Somerset and Mahmood was forced to play whilst suffering from the side-effects of concussion. Mahmood unfortunately had to retire from the game due to this injury in 1999.

He returned to King’s College, London to complete his undergraduate degree in Applied Computer Science and pursued a career working for internationally renowned consulting firms Deloitte Consulting and Capgemini Ernst & Young where he developed a specialism in Data Science, Six Sigma and Operational Excellence. In 2008, Mahmood was appointed as a Trusted Advisor to the UK Board of T-Mobile (now EE) where he led major strategic and operational programmes across Europe advising the CEO and CFO of T-Mobile (UK).

In 2011, whilst completing his Executive MBA at the prestigious Cass Business School (now Bayes Business School) Mahmood was appointed the Investment Director of a private family office, whose investments were managed from UK, UAE, Guernsey and Pakistan. Mahmood oversaw over £100m of technology investments across the world. In 2014, Mahmood became a founder and Lead Architect of a new EdTech platform which grew across four continents. In 2019, Mahmood became the Chief Venture Officer of a venture studio and is now actively helping early stage entrepreneurs and large fortune 100 corporations to design, launch and grow ventures in the social impact industry.

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