Saturday 25 June 2011

Imran Khan

Imran Khan Niazi (Punjabi, Urdu: عمران خان نیازی) (born 25 November 1952) is a former Pakistani cricketer who played international cricket for two decades in the late twentieth century and has been a politician since the mid-1990s. Currently, besides his political activism, Khan is also a philanthropist and cricket commentator.Khan made a lacklustre first-class cricket debut at the age of sixteen in Lahore. By the start of the 1970s, he was playing for his home teams of Lahore A (1969–70), Lahore B (1969–70), Lahore Greens (1970–71) and, eventually, Lahore (1970–71).[12] Khan was part of Oxford University's Blues Cricket team during the 1973-75 seasons.[8] At Worcestershire, where he played county cricket from 1971 to 1976, he was regarded as only an average medium pace bowler. During this decade, other teams represented by Khan include Dawood Industries (1975–76) and Pakistan International Airlines (1975–76 to 1980-81). From 1983 to 1988, he played for Sussex.[1]
At the height of his career, in 1982, the thirty-year old Khan took over the captaincy of the Pakistani cricket team from Javed Miandad. Recalling his initial discomfort with this new role, he later said, "When I became the cricket captain, I couldn’t speak to the team directly I was so shy. I had to tell the manager, I said listen can you talk to them, this is what I want to convey to the team. I mean early team meetings I use to be so shy and embarrassed I couldn’t talk to the team."[16] As a captain, Khan played 48 Test matches, out of which 14 were won by Pakistan, 8 lost and the rest of 26 were drawn. He also played 139 ODIs, winning 77, losing 57 and ending one in a tie.[1]
Imran Khan Lifting the 1992 world cup for Pakistan.
In the team's second match under his leadership, Khan led them to their first Test win on English soil for 28 years at Lord's.[17] Khan's first year as captain was the peak of his legacy as a fast bowler as well as an all-rounder. He recorded the best Test bowling of his career while taking 8 wickets for 58 runs against Sri Lanka at Lahore in 1981-82.[1] He also topped both the bowling and batting averages against England in three Test series in 1982, taking 21 wickets and averaging 56 with the bat. Later the same year, he put up a highly acknowledged performance in a home series against the formidable Indian team by taking 40 wickets in six Tests at an average of 13.95. By the end of this series in 1982-83, Khan had taken 88 wickets in 13 Test matches over a period of one year as captain.[12]
This same Test series against India, however, also resulted in a stress fracture in his shin that kept him out of cricket for more than two years. An experimental treatment funded by the Pakistani government helped him recover by the end of 1984 and he made a successful comeback to international cricket in the latter part of the 1984-85 season.[1]
In 1987, Khan led Pakistan to its first ever Test series win in India, which was followed by Pakistan's first series victory in England the same year.[17] During the 1980s, his team also recorded three creditable draws against the West Indies. India and Pakistan co-hosted the 1987 World Cup, but neither ventured beyond the semi-finals. Khan retired from international cricket at the end of the World Cup. In 1988, he was asked to return to the captaincy by the President Of Pakistan, General Zia-Ul-Haq, and on 18 January, he announced his decision to rejoin the team.[1] Soon after returning to the captaincy, Khan led Pakistan to another winning tour in the West Indies, which he has recounted as "the last time I really bowled well".[7] He was declared Man of the Series against West Indies in 1988 when he took 23 wickets in 3 tests.[1]
Khan's career-high as a captain and cricketer came when he led Pakistan to victory in the 1992 Cricket World Cup. Playing with a brittle batting lineup, Khan promoted himself as a batsman to play in the top order along with Javed Miandad, but his contribution as a bowler was minimal. At the age of 39, Khan scored the highest runs of all the Pakistani batsmen and took the winning last wicket himself.[12]

Post-retirement

In 1994, Khan had admitted that, during Test matches, he "occasionally scratched the side of the ball and lifted the seam." He had also added, "Only once did I use an object. When Sussex were playing Hampshire in 1981 the ball was not deviating at all. I got the 12th man to bring out a bottle top and it started to move around a lot."[18] In 1996, Khan successfully defended himself in a libel action brought forth by former English captain and all-rounder Ian Botham and batsman Allan Lamb over comments they alleged were made by Khan in two articles about the above-mentioned ball-tampering and another article published in an Indian magazine, India Today. They claimed that, in the latter publication, Khan had called the two cricketers "racist, ill-educated and lacking in class." Khan protested that he had been misquoted, saying that he was defending himself after having admitted that he tampered with a ball in a county match 18 years ago.[19] Khan won the libel case, which the judge labeled a "complete exercise in futility", with a 10-2 majority decision by the jury.[19]
Since retiring, Khan has written opinion pieces on cricket for various British and Asian newspapers, especially regarding the Pakistani national team. His contributions have been published in India's Outlook magazine,[20] the Guardian,[21] the Independent, and the Telegraph. Khan also sometimes appears as a cricket commentator on Asian and British sports networks, including BBC Urdu[22] and the Star TV network.[23] In 2004, when the Indian cricket team toured Pakistan after 14 years, he was a commentator on TEN Sports' special live show, Straight Drive,[24] while he was also a columnist for sify.com for the 2005 India-Pakistan Test series.[25] He has provided analysis for every cricket World Cup since 1992, which includes providing match summaries for BBC during the 1999 World Cup.[25]
In November 2009 Khan underwent emergency surgery at Lahore's Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital to remove an obstruction in his small intestine.[26]

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