IMRAN KHAN
Early life and cricket career
Khan was born into an affluent Pashtun family in Lahore and was educated at elite
schools in Pakistan and the United Kingdom, including the Royal Grammar School in
Worcester and Aitchison College in Lahore. There were several accomplished cricket
players in his family, including two elder cousins, Javed Burki and Majid Khan, who
both served as captains of the Pakistani national team. Imran Khan played cricket in
Pakistan and the United Kingdom in his teens and continued playing while studying
philosophy, politics, and economics at the University of Oxford. Khan played his first
match for Pakistan’s national team in 1971, but he did not take a permanent place on the
team until after his graduation from Oxford in 1976.
By the early 1980s Khan had distinguished himself as an exceptional bowler and all-
rounder, and he was named captain of the Pakistani team in 1982. Khan’s athletic talent
and good looks made him a celebrity in Pakistan and England, and his regular
appearances at fashionable London nightclubs provided fodder for the British tabloid
press. In 1992 Khan achieved his greatest athletic success when he led the Pakistani
team to its first World Cup title, defeating England in the final. He retired that same
year, having secured a reputation as one of the greatest cricket players in history.
After 1992 Khan remained in the public eye as a philanthropist. He experienced a
religious awakening, embracing Sufi mysticism and shedding his earlier playboy image.
In one of his philanthropic endeavours, Khan acted as the primary fund-raiser for the
Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital, a specialized cancer hospital in Lahore,
which opened in 1994. The hospital was named after Khan’s mother, who had died of
cancer in 1985.
Entry into politics
Imran Khan and Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI)
Imran Khan leading supporters of his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), in a protest against
Pervez Musharraf, Lahore, Pakistan, February 24, 2008. (more)
After his retirement from cricket, Khan became an outspoken critic of government
mismanagement and corruption in Pakistan. He founded his own political party,
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Pakistan Justice Movement; PTI), in 1996. In national
elections held the following year, the newly formed party won less than 1 percent of the
vote and failed to win any seats in the National Assembly, but it fared slightly better in
the 2002 elections, winning a single seat that Khan filled. Khan maintained that vote
rigging was to blame for his party’s low vote totals. In October 2007 Khan was among a
group of politicians who resigned from the National Assembly, protesting Pres. Pervez
Musharraf’s candidacy in the upcoming presidential election. In November Khan was
briefly imprisoned during a crackdown against critics of Musharraf, who had declared a
state of emergency. The PTI condemned the state of emergency, which ended in mid-
December, and boycotted the 2008 national elections to protest Musharraf’s rule.
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.
Khan’s writings included Warrior Race: A Journey Through the Land of the Tribal
Pathans (1993) and Pakistan: A Personal History (2011).
