Imran Khan
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Template:Infobox Cricketer Imran Khan (Mohammad Imran Khan Niazi, born November 25 1952) was a Pakistani cricketer (1971-1992) and captain of the Pakistani cricket team. He is currently a member of the National Assembly, the lower house of the Pakistani parliament.
Khan is seen as Pakistan's finest ever all-rounder and, along with Garfield Sobers, Kapil Dev and Ian Botham, one of the greatest of all time. He made his Test debut against England at Birmingham in 1971 at the age of 18 where his performance was not impressive. He took his maiden Test wicket three years later, in 1974, in another tour of England. In the same year, he made his ODI debut also against England at Nottingham. His first 4 wicket haul in Test cricket came in 1976 against New Zealand at home. He scored his maiden Test fifty at Karachi in the same series.
In 1982/83, he took 40 wickets in a Test series against India which stands as a Pakistani (and Asian) record even in 2004. In 88 Test matches for his country, Khan scored 3807 runs and took 362 wickets (3rd best by a Pakistani after Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis) at an average of 22.81 runs per wicket (the best by a Pakistani). He took 10 wickets in a match 6 times, which is the highest by a Pakistani. He captained his country for 48 matches. In first-class cricket, he took more than 1000 wickets at an average of 22.32 runs per wicket.
Khan went to school in Lahore and then attended the Royal Grammar School Worcester and Keble College, Oxford where he was also Captain of the Oxford University Cricket team in 1974. He comes from a cricketing family with two of his cousins Javed Burke and Majid Khan also having played test cricket for Pakistan.
He was married to Jemima (aka Haiqa) Khan who is the daughter of the late British billionaire Sir James Goldsmith. Jemima Khan embraced Islam before she married Khan. They announced their divorce on 22 June, 2004.
Since retiring from Pakistani Test cricket, Khan has been devoting most of his time to the Shaukat Khannum Memorial Hospital, a state-of-the-art charitable Cancer Hospital that he established using donations in Lahore. In recent years he has started a socio-political movement in Pakistan known as 'Tehrik-i-Insaf' or 'Movement for Justice' and ran for office in the National Elections. He became a Member of Parliament for Mianwali in the October 2002 elections.
Amongst his honours include being awarded the Hilal-e-Imtiaz in 1993 by the Pakistani government, Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford and Wisden Cricketer of the Year 1983. He captained the Pakistani cricket team to victory in the 1992 cricket World Cup.
Imran Khan is now a politician, admired for his sincerity and criticised for his confused political stand on different issues. Imran Khan was appointed as Chancellor of the University of Bradford from 28 April 2005.
He jumpstarted the Newsweek-induced frenzy when he demanded an apology for the alleged desecration of the Qur'an on May 6, 2005. He was perceived as a hypocrite by many in the West because he made his name and fortune in the British tabloids as a cricket megastar and an international playboy, which are anathema to the strict form of Islam to which he panders as a Pakistani politician.
[1] (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/658vhcpk.asp)
Further reading
- Tennant, Ivor. 1994 Imran Khan
- Imran Khan. 1988 All Round View
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