Imran Khanਇਮਰਾਨ ਖ਼ਾਨ

Imran Khan is a former cricketer and politician from Lahore, Punjab, who captained Pakistan to its first Cricket World Cup victory in 1992 and later served as the country's prime minister from 2018 to 2022. One of the finest all-rounders the game has seen, he took 362 wickets in Test cricket, built Pakistan's first cancer hospital from public donations, founded a political party, and reached the highest office in the country before being removed by a vote of no confidence.

Early life in Lahore and Oxford

Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi was born on 5 October 1952 in Lahore, the only son of Ikramullah Khan Niazi, a civil engineer, and his wife Shaukat Khanum. He had four sisters. His father's Niazi family were Pathans, while his mother's Burki family had lived near Jalandhar in Punjab for centuries before migrating to Pakistan after Partition in 1947. He was educated at Aitchison College and the Cathedral School in Lahore, then at the Royal Grammar School in Worcester, England, from September 1971. Cambridge turned him down, but Keble College, Oxford, accepted him to read philosophy, politics and economics, and he graduated in 1975.

The all-rounder who remade Pakistan cricket

Imran made his Test debut against England on 3 June 1971 and played the last of his 88 Tests in January 1992. He scored 3,807 Test runs at an average of 37.69, with six centuries, and took 362 wickets at 22.81, including 23 five-wicket innings hauls. In one-day internationals he scored 3,709 runs and took 182 wickets in 175 matches. He became captain in 1982 and that year led Pakistan to its first Test win in England in 28 years, at Lord's. He was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1983, and his 40 wickets at 13.95 against India in 1982 to 1983 pushed his bowling rating to 922 in February 1983, the highest recorded since the First World War era ratings and the third highest of all time.

A stress fracture in his left shin kept him out of cricket for more than two years in the mid 1980s, and he recovered only after experimental treatment in London funded by the Pakistani government. He was the first Pakistani bowler to take 200 Test wickets. He also pushed world cricket towards neutral umpires, inviting Indian umpires to officiate a home series in 1986 and English umpires in 1989 to 1990, a step on the road to the independent umpiring rules adopted in 1994 and 2002. In 1987 Pakistan won a Test series in India and a series in England for the first time, both under his captaincy.

How did Imran Khan win the 1992 World Cup?

He won it as a captain who had already retired once and come back. Imran retired after the 1987 World Cup, then returned at the request of President Zia-ul-Haq. On the 1988 tour of the West Indies he took 23 wickets in three Tests and was named man of the series. At the 1992 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, Pakistan recovered from a poor start to reach the final against England in Melbourne. Imran promoted himself up the order, top-scored with 72, and took the final wicket himself as Pakistan won its first World Cup. At 39 he was the oldest captain to lift the trophy at the time, and he remains the only Pakistani captain to have won it. In all, he captained Pakistan in 48 Tests and 139 one-day matches, and he was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009.

The cancer hospital and public work

After cricket, Imran turned to public work. His mother had died of cancer, and he raised funds across Pakistan, mostly from ordinary people, to build the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital in Lahore, which opened in 1994 as the country's first cancer hospital of its kind. By 2024 about 70 percent of its patients were receiving free care. He served as a UNICEF Special Representative for Sports, founded the Imran Khan Foundation in 2006, and helped set up Namal College near his ancestral area of Mianwali, which opened in 2008. He was Chancellor of the University of Bradford from 2005 to 2014.

From party founder to prime minister

Imran founded the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party on 25 April 1996. Its rise was slow: in 2002 he won a single National Assembly seat, from Mianwali, and was his party's only successful candidate. In the 2013 election the party became the leading party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. In 2018 he contested five constituencies and won all five, the first person in Pakistan's electoral history to do so, and on 18 August 2018 he became the country's 19th prime minister. His government ran the Ehsaas welfare programme, which became Pakistan's largest during the COVID-19 pandemic, and he spoke internationally against Islamophobia. In April 2022 he became the first Pakistani prime minister removed through a vote of no confidence.

Legal cases and imprisonment

After leaving office, Imran faced a series of court cases. The Election Commission barred him from holding elected office for one term in October 2022 in the Toshakhana case, which concerned gifts received while in office. He survived an assassination attempt in November 2022. He was arrested in May 2023 in the Al-Qadir Trust case; the Supreme Court later declared that arrest unlawful, and he was arrested again in August 2023. In January 2025 he was sentenced to 14 years in the Al-Qadir Trust case. He has said his imprisonment is politically motivated; the government of Shehbaz Sharif and the military establishment deny that claim. He has been held at Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi since 2023. This page records the documented course of those events without taking a side in them.