There is a kind of teacher the world rarely sees, one who follows a student home, waives his fees, funds his training, and then simply never leaves.
M S Qureshi was that kind of teacher. The Ahmedabad cricket coach died on Wednesday at the home of his former student Sanjay Limbachiya, where he had lived for 30 years. He was 80.
The story began in 1987. Limbachiya came to Qureshi for coaching, then disappeared after three months. The fees were too steep for his family. Back then finances were a challenge for the family, though the situation may have changed years later.
Most coaches would have moved on. Qureshi did not.
He traced the boy’s address. He went to the family home. He told Limbachiya’s father that his son had the talent to go far and that money would not stand in the way. He waived the fees. Then he went further, committing to fund Limbachiya’s education entirely.
Cricket eventually did what words couldn’t. When Limbachiya scored a century in an important match, his father was moved. As a gesture of gratitude, he built two rooms on the first floor of his Ghatlodia home and asked Qureshi, who was single, to move in.
Qureshi accepted. That was 1992. When the family later shifted to a new house in Gurukul, Limbachiya took his coach along. His father, when renovating, built an extra room and told Qureshi it was his for life. This time too money didn’t come in the way of cementing what would be a profound relationship.
The bond outlasted cricket. It outlasted Limbachiya’s father too.
Limbachiya recalled that his father died in Qureshi’s arms. After that loss, Qureshi became the head of the family. On Wednesday, the roles reversed and it was Qureshi who passed, inside the home he had shared with the Limbachiyas for three decades.
Limbachiya took his coach’s body to Jamnagar, where Qureshi’s relatives live, for the last rites.
Qureshi had come to Ahmedabad from Jamnagar in 1977. He began as a local umpire, then turned to coaching. He started structured sessions at Sardar Patel Stadium before moving to a ground in Paldi. Over the decades, he is credited with training close to 80,000 cricketers in the city.
Iqbal Shaikh, who became Qureshi’s student in 1978 and later his long-time assistant, remembered a coach who never let a boy’s poverty become his barrier. Shaikh himself had no whites for training. Qureshi bought him the outfit and the full kit.
Shaikh recalled that money was never the point for Qureshi. What mattered was sharpening young talent. He had a particular method too: fielding came first, before batting or bowling.
Former Gujarat Cricket Association joint secretary Hitesh Patel wrote in a tribute that Qureshi never charged those who couldn’t pay, because for him cricket was never commerce. It was lifelong devotion.
Patel wrote that behind his firmness was a heart wide enough to hold everyone. He shaped cricketers, yes. But more than that, he shaped character. He didn’t just build teams, he built a family. That family kept him until the very end.
