Biography Imran Khan

Imran Khan

Imran Khan, in full Imran Ahmad Khan Niazi, (born November 25, 1952, Lahore, Pakistan), Pakistani cricket player, politician, and philanthropist who became a national hero by leading the Pakistani team to a World Cup victory in 1992 and later entered politics as a critic of government corruption in Pakistan.

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 older cousins, Javed Burki and Majid Khan, who both served as captains of the Pakistan 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.

After his retirement from cricket, Khan became an outspoken critic of government mismanagement and corruption in Pakistan. He founded his own political party, Tehreek-e-Insaf (Justice Movement), 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 2007 Khan was briefly imprisoned during a crackdown against critics of the administration of Pres. Pervez Musharraf after Musharraf declared a state of emergency in November. Tehreek-e-Insaf condemned the state of emergency, which ended in mid-December, and boycotted the 2008 national elections to protest Musharraf’s rule.

In spite of Tehreek-e-Insaf’s struggles in elections, Khan’s populistpostitions 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.

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 Tehreek-e-Insaf’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’s writings include Warrior Race: A Journey Through the Land of the Tribal Pathans (1993) and Pakistan: A Personal History (2011).