Peter MacDonald
Last week, Imran Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were handed concurrent prison sentences in a high profile fraud case involving state gifts. Khan received 10 years for criminal breach of trust and seven years for criminal misconduct, along with a substantial fine, while his wife also received a prison term. These sentences run alongside multiple convictions he is already serving, including a 14-year sentence in a separate corruption case. Khan has effectively been under judicial detention since August 2023, facing ongoing legal pressure across more than 180 pending cases. His legal team maintains the charges are politically motivated and has announced plans to appeal, but the cumulative effect underscores the severity and persistence of Pakistan’s judicial actions against him.
Before entering politics, Khan was a global sporting icon, admired as much for charisma as for cricketing brilliance. During his professional career in the UK, the British tabloid press famously dubbed him the “International Lothario”, a George-Best-like figure whose magnetism extended far beyond the boundary rope. Alongside contemporaries such as Ian Botham, Viv Richards and Dennis Lillee, Khan was portrayed as cricket’s most glamorous export: Oxford educated, impeccably spoken and at ease in London’s elite social world.
British tabloids including the Sun, Daily Mirror and Daily Mail regularly featured him in society pages and nightlife columns. He was framed as the handsome Pakistani prince: exotic but acceptable; a figure who bridged aristocracy, celebrity and sport. His marriage to Jemima Goldsmith only intensified this narrative, reinforcing his status as a global celebrity rather than merely a cricketer. Yet this public image often overshadowed the real Khan, one of the most consequential figures in modern cricket.
From 1971 to 1992, Khan transformed Pakistan into a formidable international side. As captain, he led the team to its first ever test series victories in England and India, pioneered aggressive fast bowling attacks and redefined leadership by example. His career culminated in Pakistan’s unforgettable 1992 Cricket World Cup victory in New Zealand, cementing his place in sporting history. An elite all-rounder, he scored over 3,000 test runs and took more than 300 wickets, holds the world record for most wickets taken as a test captain and was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009.
During his London years, Khan was part of an elite international cricketing circle, socialising and travelling with figures such as Gordon Greenidge and Michael Holding, in an era when county cricket doubled as a social crossroads. He was admired, envied and respected. Yet today, as he sits in prison, few of those same contemporaries or international cricketing institutions, including in New Zealand, have spoken publicly in his defence, revealing how quickly sporting fraternity dissolves when politics intrudes.
Like an elite troop of special forces, Khan and his cricketing peers understood the demands of extreme discipline and the relentless pursuit of excellence bonds forged on the field, translating naturally into deep respect and camaraderie off it. Even among the cricketing elite, Khan commanded extraordinary respect. Sir Richard Hadlee, New Zealand’s finest bowler, publicly named him the best all-rounder of their era – praising him as a versatile batsman, a potent strike bowler and a charismatic captain: the complete package on the world stage. Figures such as the late Martin Crowe, Ian Botham, Viv Richards and others were not merely friends socially, but they were members of a circle shaped by mastery of their craft – understanding what it took to lead under scrutiny, carry nations on their shoulders, and excel when failure was public and unforgiving.
Khan’s influence extended far beyond sport. Long before politics, he founded the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, Pakistan’s first specialist cancer hospital, named in honour of his mother. Built entirely through personal fundraising and private donations, it has treated millions of patients and many free of charge. This was not a symbolic charity but structural nation-building, reinforcing his reputation as a leader motivated by public service rather than personal enrichment.
His integration into Britain’s elite went further. Through his marriage to Jemima Goldsmith, Khan developed a friendship with Diana, Princess of Wales, moving comfortably within royal and aristocratic circles. At the time, Khan was presented as the embodiment of cosmopolitan globalism, sport, royalty, wealth and influence intertwined. Yet today, that entire constellation of power has fallen silent. Even his former British wife has largely avoided public scrutiny and international figures including leaders such as Donald Trump have refrained from speaking out.
It is a telling shame that when one supposedly has friends and acquaintances in the highest strata of international society, those connections prove shallow and conditional. When a figure falls from favour, elite loyalty evaporates. In Khan’s case, this abandonment is magnified by the cultural reality of Pakistan’s political system, where once a leader is deemed inconvenient, isolation becomes total. Fame, philanthropy and global prestige offer no shield against entrenched power. The vindictiveness of Pakistan’s political elite is not merely a reflection of individual animus: it is embedded within the Pakistani political culture – a cultural phenomenon of Pakistan’s political system.
This vindictive pattern hardened after the rupture of 1971, when the Pakistani state learned that leaders could be eliminated rather than managed. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the country’s first elected civilian leader, was judicially executed in 1979 following a trial widely regarded as politically motivated. The man who removed him, Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, seized power in 1977, imposed martial law, suspended the constitution and ruled for 11 years. Zia-ul-Haq politicised the judiciary, embedding the idea that courts could legitimise punishment rather than restrain power. Even he did not escape the system he entrenched: in 1988, he died in a plane crash that was officially labelled an accident but widely believed to have been an assassination. Across the decades that followed, leaders were jailed, exiled, judicially destroyed or killed. Law became elastic. Accountability became selective. Punishment became symbolic.
Seen in this context, the stacking of charges against Imran Khan, the severity of sentencing over matters that elsewhere would be resolved through repayment or censure and the harsh conditions of his confinement are not about accountability alone. They are about deterrence. Pakistan’s political history shows that once a leader challenges the established order, mercy disappears and vindictiveness is repackaged as justice. That a man once celebrated globally for sporting excellence, humanitarian vision, charisma and elite connections now sits confined under punitive conditions underscores the stark contrast between global adulation and domestic peril in Pakistan’s political landscape.
It is also time for the British tabloids, the Sun, Daily Mirror and Daily Mail, to reckon with their long standing role in shaping Khan’s global image. For decades, they profited from his charisma, cricketing exploits and social life: clickbaiting and embellishing stories that sold millions of copies. Now, as their former subject faces harsh imprisonment, these outlets remain silent. Yet they are still influential and a public acknowledgment of his contributions to international and Pakistani cricket, as well as his philanthropy and the inhumane treatment imposed by the Pakistani government, could shift the narrative and remind the world of the man behind the headlines.
At the same time, Khan’s former cricketing friends could step forward by writing letters or open tributes to these newspapers, publicly acknowledging his sporting achievements, leadership and humanitarian work. Such contributions could be published by the very tabloids that once profited from his fame, giving the world a tangible reminder of his legacy beyond politics. These letters would serve as both a personal show of solidarity and a public statement, reinforcing that respect for excellence endures even when political fortunes falter. If they truly valued the figure they helped popularise, now is the moment to speak.
