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In his bitter fight with his jailers in Pakistan, the country’s former cricket captain and prime minister Imran Khan has received the backing of his former opponents on the pitch.
Fourteen former international cricket captains this week called on Islamabad to provide “immediate” medical attention to Khan as outrage grows in Pakistan over his alleged mistreatment in prison.
England’s Mike Atherton, India’s Kapil Dev Nikhanj and Australia’s Allan Border are among the cricketing grandees to express alarm at the treatment of Khan, who has been imprisoned since August 2023 due to convictions in a string of cases on charges ranging from corruption to disclosing state secrets.
“He remains one of the finest all-rounders and captains the sport has ever seen, earning respect from players, fans, and administrators alike,” the former captains wrote in an open letter to Pakistan’s government.
“We believe that a person of Imran Khan’s stature deserves to be treated with dignity and basic human consideration befitting a former national leader and global sporting icon.”
Their intervention follows a report from a lawyer from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party submitted to the Supreme Court.
The lawyer wrote that the former prime minister had been experiencing “persistent blurred and hazy vision” since October 2025, which Khan had reported to jail officials who had refused to take action. Khan claimed he had been diagnosed with a blood clot and had been left with only “only 15% vision in his right eye”, the report said.
The allegations about his health have sparked a political firestorm in Pakistan.
Parliamentarians loyal to Khan, who was prime minister from 2018 to 2022, have staged a sit-in protest outside parliament in Islamabad for the past six days, while his supporters have blocked highways.
Aleema Khan, the former prime minister’s sister, said his family rejected the findings of a team of eye specialists who visited Khan on Sunday on orders from the Supreme Court. She has demanded Khan be moved to an Islamabad hospital, where he could be treated in the presence of his family and personal doctors.
The PTI and other opposition allies have demanded that Khan receive immediate access to his personal doctors for an independent medical examination, that those doctors receive copies of his medical reports, and that the government explains why “any obstruction or delay occurred in the provision of treatment”, it wrote on X on Wednesday morning.
Khan denies all charges and says the allegations have been orchestrated by the country’s powerful military to lock him out of power in the country of 240mn people, where he remains wildly popular. The military claims that it has no political role, but its army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir is the country’s most powerful figure and de facto ruler.
Candidates loyal to Khan’s party won the most seats in the 2024 election, despite widespread allegations of rigging by intelligence services to favour the ruling party of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
In a press conference on Tuesday night, Uzma Khan, his sister, claimed that the former prime minister believed that Munir, who was removed as Khan’s top spymaster in 2019, was “slowly killing” him.
Pakistani officials have denied any wrongdoing and claim that Khan’s treatment in prison abides by international human rights standards. They blame his family and supporters for “politicising” his imprisonment to destabilise the country.
