Imran Khan: Journey From Cricket To Prime Minister
Imran Khan Biography
Khan was born to a Pashtun family in Lahore in 1952,and graduated from Keble College, Oxford in 1975. 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. 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, 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 ever all-rounders, Khan registered 3,807 runs and took 362 wickets in Test cricket and was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame.
In 1991, he launched a fundraising campaign to set up a cancer hospital in memory of his mother. He raised $25 million to set up a hospital in Lahore in 1994, and set up a second hospital in Peshawar in 2015. Khan then continued his philanthropic efforts, expanding the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital to also include a research centre, and founded Namal College in 2008. Khan also served as the chancellor of the University of Bradford between 2005 and 2014, and was the recipient of an honorary fellowship by the Royal College of Physicians in 2012.
The first fundraising dinner in support of the project was held in 1988 in Dubai, where Imran Khan was playing at the time, in a cricket tournament. As donations started pouring in, he knew there was no turning back. After he returned to Pakistan, he gathered a team of eminent individuals from diverse backgrounds and formed the Board of Governors of the newly established Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust. Initially, Imran faced scepticism from friends as well as many experts in the field of medicine, who told him his idea would fail and that he would end up hurting the reputation he had built over the years as a cricketer. The Board held a meeting with twenty of the top doctors in Lahore for advice on how to proceed, where all but one said that the project was not feasible. The one doctor who said it was possible to make the Hospital, warned that it would be impossible to provide free cancer treatment for the needy, given how expensive cancer treatment was. Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centers (SKMCH&RC) are state-of-the-art cancer centers located in Lahore and Peshawar, Pakistan. SKMCH&RC, Lahore was the first project of the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust, which is a charitable organization established under the Societies Registration Act XXI of 1860 of Pakistan.
Imran khan Cricket Career
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. Few would dispute that Imran was the finest cricketer Pakistan has produced, or the biggest heartthrob. Suave, erudite and monstrously talented, he gave cricket in the subcontinent real sex appeal in the 1970s and 1980s. As such he and TV completed the popularisation of the game in his country which Hanif Mohammad and the radio had begun. Thousands, if not millions, who had never dreamt of bowling fast on heartless baked mud suddenly wanted to emulate Imran and his lithe bounding run, his leap and his reverse-swinging yorker. He also made himself into an allrounder worth a place for his batting alone, and captained Pakistan as well as anyone, rounding off his career with the 1992 World Cup. He played hardly any domestic cricket in Pakistan: instead he just flew in for home series from Worcestershire or Sussex, or rather from the more fashionable London salons. His averages (37 with the bat, 22 with the ball) put him at the top of the quartet of allrounders (Ian Botham, Richard Hadlee and Kapil Dev being the others) who dominated Test cricket in the 1980s. And whereas Botham declined steadily, Imran just got better and better: in his last 10 years of international cricket he played 51 Tests, averaging a sensational 50 with the bat and 19 with the ball. He gave no quarter during some memorable battles with West Indies – Pakistan drew three series with them at a time when everybody else was being bounced out of sight – and he led Pakistan to their first series victory in England in 1987, taking 10 for 77 with an imperious display in the decisive victory at Headingley.
1992 Cricket World Cup
The final of the 1992 ICC Cricket World Cup was played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne on 25 March 1992.The match was won by Pakistan, under the captaincy of Imran Khan, as they defeated England by 22 runs to lift their first ever World Cup trophy. This was the second Cricket World Cup final to be played outside England and the first in Australia. 87,182 spectators turned out to see the final. Pakistan qualified as the last team from the group stages with four wins, three losses and a no result. They defeated Zimbabwe (by 53 runs), Australia (by 48 runs), Sri Lanka (by 4 wickets) and New Zealand (by 7 wickets) and lost to West Indies (by 10 wickets), India (by 43 runs) and South Africa (by 20 runs) while the match against England ended in no result.
In the semi-finals, the Men in Green came face to face against New Zealand where they beat the Blackcaps by 4 wickets at Eden Park in Auckland. Inzaman-ul-Haq starred with a 37-ball 60 as Pakistan won the match with an over to spare. In the other semi-final, England defeated South Africa by 19 runs at the Sydney Cricket Ground in Sydney. It was a dream moment at the MCG and Pakistan fans soaked in the glory as Khan and co. made the impossible possible, thanks to some solid performances throughout the tournament from Miandad (437 runs), Raja (349 runs) and leading wicket taker Akram, who had 18 wickets to his name and also the Man-of-the-Match in the final.
The final was supposed to be a grand occasion. Not only because it was a World Cup final but also because it was supposed to be Khan’s last ODI and didn’t he sign off in style.
“It is not defeat that destroys you, it is being demoralized by defeat that destroys you.”
— Imran Khan
Imran khan Political Career
The journey from cricket to politics was not an easy one for Imran Khan. After announcing his retirement from the sport, he launched Tehreek-e-Insaf in 1996 to break the dominance of the traditional parties – Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
“I never wanted to enter politics till 1995 as I was busy collecting donations for Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital for which I wanted to do a fundraising show on PTV. But, I was disappointed when denied permission on political grounds,” he once told me. “I was then advised by my friends to form a political party if I wanted to challenge them. Finally, we launched a small party of people with little experience in politics, who wanted to change the system,” he stated in 2001. “In my initial years in politics, I used to discuss more cricket and less politics.”
Imran Khan was successful in becoming a Member of Parliament in 2002 and was later elected to the National Assembly in 2013 as his party emerged as the second largest in the country. However, he alleged that the polls were rigged in favour of the Nawaz Sharif-led Pakistan Muslim League.
First Election
Khan was offered political positions more than a few times during his cricketing career. In 1987, then-President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq offered him a political position in Pakistan Muslim League (PML) which he declined. He was also invited by Nawaz Sharif to join his political party. In 1993, Khan was appointed as the ambassador for tourism in the caretaker government of Moeen Qureshi and held the portfolio for three months until the government dissolved.
The PTI was not even one-year old, when it decided to test its mettle in the 1997 elections. It was a surprise decision as neither its leaders nor most of its members knew the dynamics of elections, voters’ lists and how polling agents work etc. Yet, they went to the polls and Imran Khan himself contested from more than one seat, including Karachi. It was a learning experience. His name also figured in a controversy, involving former ISI chief, late Lt General Hameed Gul, and late Abdus Sattar Edhi. It was for the first time that Edhi accused agencies of pressuring him to join politics. He was so upset that he wrote a ‘last will’ in London in which he named people who had threatened him.
In spite of the PTI’s struggles in elections, Khan’s populist positions found support, especially among young people. He continued his criticism of corruption and economic inequality in Pakistan and opposed the Pakistani government’s cooperation with the United States in fighting militants near the Afghan border. He also launched broadsides against Pakistan’s political and economic elites, whom he accused of being Westernized and out of touch with Pakistan’s religious and cultural norms.
Election 2013
In the months leading up to the legislative elections scheduled for early 2013, Khan and his party drew large crowds at rallies and attracted the support of several veteran politicians from Pakistan’s established parties. Further evidence of Khan’s rising political fortunes came in the form of an opinion poll in 2012 that found him to be the most popular political figure in Pakistan.
Just days before legislative elections in May 2013, Khan injured his head and back when he fell from a platform at a campaign rally. He appeared on television from his hospital bed hours later to make a final appeal to voters. The elections produced the PTI’s highest totals yet, but the party still won less than half the number of seats won by the Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML-N), led by Nawaz Sharif. Khan accused the PML-N of rigging the elections. After his calls for an investigation went unmet, he and other opposition leaders led four months of protests in late 2014 in order to pressure Sharif to step down.
The investigation disqualified Sharif from holding public office in 2017, and he was forced to resign from office. Khan, meanwhile, was also revealed to have had offshore holdings but, in a separate case, was not disqualified by the Supreme Court.
Imran Khan as prime minister
In 2010, Khan said in an interview: “I grew up hating India because I grew up in Lahore and there were massacres of 1947, so much bloodshed and anger. But as I started touring India, I got such love and friendship there that all this disappeared.” In August 2012, the Pakistani Taliban issued death threats if he went ahead with his march to their tribal stronghold along the Afghan border to protest US drone attacks, because he calls himself a “liberal” – a term they associate with a lack of religious belief. On 1 October 2012, prior to his plan to address a rally in South Waziristan, senior commanders of Pakistani Taliban said after a meeting headed by the Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud that they now offered Khan security assistance for the rally because of Khan’s opposition to drone attacks in Pakistan, reversing their previous stance.
Imran Khan contested the general election from NA-35 (Bannu), NA-53 (Islamabad-II), NA-95 (Mianwali-I), NA-131 (Lahore-IX), and NA-243 (Karachi East-II).According to early, official results, Khan led the poll, although his opposition, mainly PML-N, alleged large-scale vote rigging and administrative malpractices.[184][185][186] On 27 July, election officials declared that Khan’s party had won 110 of the 269 seats,[27] giving PTI a plurality in the National Assembly.At the conclusion of the count on 28 July, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) announced that the PTI had won a total of 116 of the 270 seats contested. Khan became the first person in the history of Pakistan general elections who contested and won in all five constituencies, surpassing Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who contested in four but won in three constituencies in 1970.
Hidden Truth About Khan
During the 1990s, Khan also served as UNICEF’s Special Representative for Sports and promoted health and immunisation programmes in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Thailand. While in London, he also works with the Lord’s Taverners, a cricket charity. Khan focused his efforts solely on social work. By 1991, he had founded the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust, a charity organisation bearing the name of his mother, Mrs. Shaukat Khanum. As the Trust’s maiden endeavour, Khan established Pakistan’s first and only cancer hospital, constructed using donations and funds exceeding $25 million, raised by Khan from all over the world.
On 27 April 2008, Khan established a technical college in the Mianwali District called Namal College. It was built by the Mianwali Development Trust (MDT), and is an associate college of the University of Bradford in December 2005. Imran Khan Foundation is another welfare work, which aims to assist needy people all over Pakistan. It has provided help to flood victims in Pakistan. Buksh Foundation has partnered with the Imran Khan Foundation to light up villages in Dera Ghazi Khan, Mianwali and Dera Ismail Khan under the project ‘Lighting a Million Lives’. The campaign will establish several Solar Charging Stations in the selected off-grid villages and will provide villagers with solar lanterns, which can be regularly charged at the solar-charging stations.
