A coalition of 21 legendary former cricket captains from across the globe, including Indian batting icon Sunil Gavaskar and England’s longest-tenured skipper Sir Alastair Cook, has publicly called on the Pakistani government to uphold court orders and guarantee adequate, timely medical care for incarcerated former prime minister Imran Khan.
The 73-year-old, a former Pakistan national cricket team captain who led the country as prime minister from 2018 to 2022, has been held in jail since August 2023 facing over 100 different charges, including allegations of corruption, leaking state secrets and selling official state gifts. Khan and his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, have consistently denied all charges, framing them as politically motivated retaliation. His imprisonment triggered widespread mass protests from his supporters, which were harshly cracked down on by state authorities.
The latest appeal, organized by former Australian cricket captain Greg Chappell, comes after a weeks-long dispute over Khan’s declining health, particularly his reported severe vision loss in his right eye. Back in February, 14 of the current signatories already joined an earlier appeal demanding humane treatment and proper medical access for Khan, when his legal team stated he had only 15% functional vision remaining in the eye after prison officials failed to act on his care needs.
In their open letter addressed to current Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, the former cricket leaders outlined three clear, core demands. First, they called for a full medical assessment of Khan led by a Supreme Court-appointed medical board that includes Khan’s own personal physicians, to address his ongoing vision issues. Second, they urged authorities to allow unimpeded weekly family visits, as already ordered by the country’s top court, with no unnecessary administrative delays or interruptions. Third, they demanded that any treatment recommended by the official medical board be provided to Khan immediately, without hold-up.
The letter notes that after Pakistan’s Supreme Court issued a ruling this Tuesday ordering the government to transfer Khan to a private hospital for examination by his chosen doctors, state authorities instead only allowed him a few hours of assessment at a government-run Islamabad hospital by a state-appointed medical team, which subsequently declared Khan “medically fit” before returning him to prison. Khan’s party has since filed a contempt of court petition against the government over its failure to comply with the Supreme Court’s order for access to Khan’s personal physicians.
“Imran Khan is 73 years old and has now spent more than three years in custody,” the letter reads. “Whatever the legal and political arguments surrounding his case, the basic decency of ensuring a court-ordered medical process is actually completed is not, in our view, a controversial request.”
Other notable signatories to the letter include multiple other English captains: Michael Atherton, Michael Brearley, Nasser Hussain, Andrew Strauss and David Gower; Indian greats Kapil Dev and Dilip Vengsarkar; and Australian legends Belinda Clark, Adam Gilchrist, Steve Waugh and Kim Hughes, among others.
In a closing statement, the group of former captains framed their appeal as a gesture rooted in the global fraternity of cricket, noting they are “former colleagues and rivals who share a bond forged on the cricket field” and that this bond “transcends the borders and disputes that too often divide countries.”