Imran Khan

Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi ( ur}; born 5 October 1952) is a Pakistani politician and former Cricket captain who served as the 22nd Prime Minister of Pakistan from August 2018 to until April 2022, when he was ousted through a no-confidence in the National Assembly. He is the founder and chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

Born to a Niazi Pashtun family in Lahore, Khan graduated from Keble College, University of Oxford, England, in 1975. He began his international cricket career at age 18, in a 1971 Test series against England. Khan played until 1992, served as the team's captain intermittently between 1982 and 1992,Pakistan Test Captaincy record
. '' Cricinfo''. Retrieved 18 December 2012. and won the 1992 Cricket World Cup, in what is Pakistan's first and only victory in the competition. Considered one of cricket's greatest all-rounders, Khan scored 3,807 runs and took 362 wickets in Test cricket and was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. Khan founded cancer hospitals in Lahore and Peshawar, and Namal College in Mianwali, prior to entering politics. Founding the PTI in 1996, Khan won a seat in the National Assembly in the 2002 general election, serving as an opposition member from Mianwali until 2007. PTI boycotted the 2008 general election and became the second-largest party by popular vote in the 2013 general election. In the 2018 general election, running on a populist platform, PTI became the largest party in the National Assembly, and formed a coalition government with independents with Khan as Prime Minister.

As Prime Minister, Khan addressed a balance of payments crisis with bailouts from the International Monetary Fund. He presided over a shrinking current account deficit, and limited defence spending to curtail the fiscal deficit, leading to some general economic growth. He enacted policies that increased tax collection, and investment. His government committed to a renewable energy transition, launched the Ehsaas Programme and the Plant for Pakistan initiative, and expanded the protected areas of Pakistan. He presided over the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused economic turmoil and rising inflation in the country, and threatened his political position. Despite a promised anti-corruption campaign, the perception of corruption in Pakistan worsened during Khan's time in office. He was accused of political victimisation of opponents and clamping down on freedom of expression and dissent.

Amid a constitutional crisis, Khan became the first Prime Minister to be removed from office through a no-confidence motion in April 2022. In August, he was charged under anti-terror laws after accusing the police and judiciary of detaining and torturing an aide. In November, he survived an assassination attempt during a political rally in Wazirabad, Punjab.

Early life and family

Khan was born in Lahore on 5 October 1952. Some reports suggest he was born on 25 November 1952. It was reported that 25 November was wrongly mentioned by Pakistan Cricket Board officials on his passport. He is the only son of Ikramullah Khan Niazi, a civil engineer, and his wife Shaukat Khanum, and has four sisters. Long settled in Mianwali in northwestern Punjab, his paternal family are of Pashtun ethnicity and belong to the Niazi tribe, and one of his ancestors, Haibat Khan Niazi, in the 16th century, "was one of Sher Shah Suri's leading generals, as well as being the governor of Punjab." Like his father, Khan's mother was an ethnic Pashtun, who belonged to the Burki tribe and whose ancestors had been settled in the Jalandhar district of Punjab for centuries. Following the creation of Pakistan, she migrated to Lahore with the rest of Khan's maternal relatives. Khan's maternal family has produced a number of cricketers, including those who have represented Pakistan, such as his cousins Javed Burki and Majid Khan. Maternally, Khan is also a descendant of the Sufi warrior-poet and inventor of the Pashto alphabet, Pir Roshan, who hailed from his maternal family's ancestral Kaniguram town located in South Waziristan in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan. His maternal family was based in Basti Danishmanda, Jalandhar, India for about 600 years.

A quiet and shy boy in his youth, Khan grew up with his sisters in relatively affluent, upper middle-class circumstances and received a privileged education. He was educated at the Aitchison College and Cathedral School in Lahore, and then the Royal Grammar School Worcester in England, where he excelled at cricket. In 1972, he enrolled in Keble College, Oxford where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics, graduating in 1975. An enthusiast for college cricket at Keble, Paul Hayes, was instrumental in securing the admission of Khan, after he had been turned down by Cambridge.

Cricket career

Khan made his first-class cricket debut at the age of 16 in Lahore. By the start of the 1970s, he was playing for his home teams of Lahore A (1969–70), Lahore B (1969–70), Lahore Greens (1970–71) and, eventually, Lahore (1970–71). Khan was part of the University of Oxford's Blues Cricket team during the 1973–1975 seasons.

He played English county cricket from 1971 to 1976 for Worcestershire. During this decade, other teams represented by Khan included Dawood Industries (1975–1976) and Pakistan International Airlines (1975–1976 to 1980–1981). From 1983 to 1988, he played for Sussex.

Khan made his Test cricket debut against England in June 1971 at Edgbaston. Three years later, in August 1974, he debuted in the One Day International (ODI) match, once again playing against England at Trent Bridge for the Prudential Trophy. After graduating from Oxford and finishing his tenure at Worcestershire, he returned to Pakistan in 1976 and secured a permanent place on his native national team starting from the 1976–1977 season, during which they faced New Zealand and Australia. Following the Australian series, he toured the West Indies, where he met Tony Greig, who signed him up for Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket. His credentials as one of the fastest bowlers in the world started to become established when he finished third at 139.7 km/h in a fast bowling contest at Perth in 1978, behind Jeff Thomson and Michael Holding, but ahead of Dennis Lillee, Garth Le Roux and Andy Roberts. During the late 1970s, Khan was one of the pioneers of the reverse swing bowling technique. He imparted this trick to the bowling duo of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, who mastered and popularised this art in later years.

As a bowler, Khan initially bowled with a relatively chest-on action, at medium-pace. However he worked hard to remodel his action to a more classical type, and to strengthen his body, to enable fast bowling. Khan attained his prime as a fast bowler in January 1980 till 1988 when he became out and out fast bowler. During this span Imran picked 236 test wickets at 17.77 apiece with 18 five-wicket hauls and 5 10 wicket hauls. His bowling average and strike rate were better than Richard Hadlee (19.03), Malcolm Marshall (20.20), Dennis Lillee (24.07), Joel Garner (20.62) and Michael Holding (23.68). In January 1983, playing against India, he attained a Test bowling rating of 922 points. Although calculated retrospectively (International Cricket Council (ICC) player ratings did not exist at the time), Khan's form and performance during this period ranks third in the ICC's All-Time Test Bowling Rankings.

Khan achieved the all-rounder's triple (securing 3000 runs and 300 wickets) in 75 Tests, the second-fastest record behind Ian Botham's 72. He also has the second-highest all-time batting average of 61.86 for a Test batsman playing at position 6 in the batting order. He played his last Test match for Pakistan in January 1992, against Sri Lanka at Faisalabad. Khan retired permanently from cricket six months after his last ODI, the historic 1992 World Cup final against England in Melbourne, Australia. He ended his career with 88 Test matches, 126 innings and scored 3807 runs at an average of 37.69, including six centuries and 18 fifties. His highest score was 136. As a bowler, he took 362 wickets in Test cricket, which made him the first Pakistani and world's fourth bowler to do so. In ODIs, he played 175 matches and scored 3709 runs at an average of 33.41. His highest score was 102 not out. His best ODI bowling was 6 wickets for 14 runs, a record for the best bowling figures by any bowler in an ODI innings in a losing cause.

Captaincy

At the height of his career, in 1982, the thirty-year-old Khan took over the captaincy of the Pakistan cricket team from Javed Miandad. As a captain, Khan played 48 Test matches, of which 14 were won by Pakistan, 8 lost and the remaining 26 were drawn. He also played 139 ODIs, winning 77, losing 57 and ending one in a tie.

In the team's second match, Khan led them to their first Test win on English soil for 28 years at Lord's. Khan's first year as captain was the peak of his legacy as a fast bowler as well as an all-rounder. He recorded the best Test bowling of his career while taking 8 wickets for 58 runs against Sri Lanka at Lahore in 1981–1982. He also topped both the bowling and batting averages against England in three-Test series in 1982, taking 21 wickets and averaging 56 with the bat. Later the same year, he put up a highly acknowledged performance in a home series against the formidable Indian team by taking 40 wickets in six Tests at an average of 13.95. By the end of this series in 1982–1983, Khan had taken 88 wickets in 13 Test matches over a period of one year as captain. This same Test series against India, however, also resulted in a stress fracture in his shin that kept him out of cricket for more than two years. An experimental treatment funded by the Pakistani government helped him recover by the end of 1984 and he made a successful comeback to international cricket in the latter part of the 1984–1985 season.

In 1987 in India, Khan led Pakistan in its first-ever Test series win and this was followed by Pakistan's first series victory in England during the same year. During the 1980s, his team also recorded three creditable draws against the West Indies. India and Pakistan co-hosted the 1987 Cricket World Cup, but neither ventured beyond the semi-finals. Khan retired from international cricket at the end of the World Cup. In 1988, he was asked to return to the captaincy by the President of Pakistan, General Zia-Ul-Haq, and on 18 January, he announced his decision to rejoin the team. Soon after returning to the captaincy, Khan led Pakistan to another winning tour in the West Indies, which he has recounted as "the last time I really bowled well". He was declared Man of the Series against West Indies in 1988 when he took 23 wickets in 3 Tests. Khan's career-high as a captain and cricketer came when he led Pakistan to victory in the 1992 Cricket World Cup. Playing with a brittle batting line-up, Khan promoted himself as a batsman to play in the top order along with Javed Miandad, but his contribution as a bowler was minimal. At the age of 39, Khan took the winning last wicket himself.

Post-retirement

After retiring, Khan remarked that there was ball tampering during his early cricketing days when playing domestic cricket.
Khan had said that, during matches, he "occasionally scratched the side of the ball and lifted the seam." However, Khan defended his actions in the same interview, arguing his conduct was commonplace at the time, even that spin bowlers would lift the seam (i.e. mildly ball tamper), further Khan argued that as he did not lift the seam of the ball above the normal level he was not violating the rules and spirit of the game within the rules defined whilst he was a player. Further, Khan argued that umpires in his 21 years of cricket had not complained about his conduct, Khan remarked that "The sole judge of fair and unfair play on the cricket field is the umpire".
He had also added, "Only once did I use an object. When Sussex was playing Hampshire in 1981 the ball was not deviating at all. I got the 12th man to bring out a bottle top and it started to move around a lot." In 1996, Khan successfully defended himself in a libel action brought forth by former English captain and all-rounder Ian Botham and batsman Allan Lamb over comments they alleged were made by Khan in two articles about the above-mentioned ball-tampering and another article published in an Indian magazine, ''India Today''. They claimed that, in the latter publication, Khan had called the two cricketers "racist, ill-educated and lacking in class." Khan protested that he had been misquoted, saying that he was defending himself after having admitted that he tampered with a ball in a county match 18 years ago. Khan won the libel case, which the judge labelled a "complete exercise in futility", with a 10–2 majority decision by the jury. Also, Khan had served as a domestic league coach.

Since retiring, Khan has written opinion pieces on cricket for various British and Asian newspapers, especially regarding the Pakistani national team. His contributions have been published in India's ''Outlook'' magazine, '' Guardian'', ''The Independent'', and ''Telegraph''. Khan also sometimes appears as a cricket commentator on Asian and British sports networks, including BBC Urdu and the Star TV network. In 2004, when the Indian cricket team toured Pakistan after 14 years, he was a commentator on TEN Sports' special live show, ''Straight Drive'', while he was also a columnist for sify.com for the 2005 India-Pakistan Test series. He has provided analysis for every cricket World Cup since 1992, which includes providing match summaries for the BBC
...