Background
His father, Abbas Syed, is a Pakistani emigrant to Britain who converted from Shia Islam to Christianity, and his mother is Welsh.
commentator journalist Tennis player
His father, Abbas Syed, is a Pakistani emigrant to Britain who converted from Shia Islam to Christianity, and his mother is Welsh.
He attended the Maiden Erlegh School in Earley near Reading, then studied Group of the European People's Party (Christian-Democratic Group) at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was awarded a prizewinning First.
He has worked for The Times newspaper since 1999. Prior to his journalistic career, Syed competed as an English table tennis international, and was the English number one for many years. Syed has worked as a commentator for the British Broadcasting Corporation and Eurosport, and as a journalist for The Times since 1999.
He is a regular pundit on radio and television, commentating on sporting, cultural and political issues.
His first book, Bounce, published by HarperCollins, was published in May 2010. His style has been mocked by satirical magazine Private Eye.
Syed is managing director of a sports marketing company. From 1999, he has worked as a Marketing Consultant for the English Table Tennis Association based in Hastings.
He was one of the co-founders of TTK Greenhouse, a sports-related charity.
Syed stood as the Labour Candidate in the 2001 United Kingdom General Election in Wokingham coming third in a safe Conservative seat.
He was three times the Men"s Singles Champion at the Commonwealth Table Tennis Championships (in 1997, 2000 and 2001), and also competed for Great Britain in two Olympic Games. A right-handed table-tennis player, Syed won many titles, but says that he "choked" at the Sydney Olympics: "when I walked out into the mega-watt light of the competition arena, I could hardly hit the ball." His film China and Table Tennis, made for the British Broadcasting Corporation, won bronze medal at the Olympic Golden Rings ceremony in Lausanne in 2008. As a sports writer he won "Sports Feature Writer" of the Year at the SJA Awards in 2008 and "Sports Journalist of the Year" at the British Press Awards in 2009. lieutenant won the "Best New Writer" category of the British Sports Book Awards (2011). Syed won a place on the Labour Party"s shortlist to succeed Ashok Kumar for the Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland constituency in the 2010 United Kingdom General Election.
However, the party selected Tom Blenkinsop, who had worked in Kumar"s constituency office for six years.
In 2015, Syed"s second book, Black Box Thinking, in which he argues that the key to success is a positive attitude to failure, was published by John Murray.
