Former Pakistan cricket captain and now Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, who led his team to victory in the 1992 World Cup, came up on top this week in an International Cricket Council Twitter poll on the best pacesetters.
“Captaincy proved a blessing for some extraordinary cricketers,” the ICC wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “Their averages improved as leaders. You decide which of these ‘pacesetters’ were the best among these geniuses!” it added, asking readers to choose between Imran Khan, India’s batsman and captain Virat Kohli, South African wonder AB de Villiers and Australia’s Meg Lanning, the woman who led Australia to multiple World Cup titles.
Khan got 47.3 percent of the votes, followed by Kohli who got 46.2%, de Villiers who got 6% and Manning who got 0.5%.
Khan was born in Lahore on November 25, 1952, and was educated at Lahore’s elite Aitchison College where he excelled at cricket. A fine batsman, he made his first-class debut for Lahore against Sarghodha at the age of 16.
Khan was selected for the Pakistan national team in 1970, where he soon won a permanent place. He finished his high school education at the Royal Grammar School in Worcester, England, and went on to study Economics and Politics at Keble College, Oxford. He captained the Oxford University XI in 1974.
As the 1970s rolled on, Khan developed into a world-class cricketing “all-rounder,” and became captain of the Pakistani national side in 1981. Declared international cricketer of the year in 1989-90, he led Pakistan to victory in 1992 World Cup.
After that triumph, he retired with a total of 3,807 runs and 362 wickets in test matches. He also played for the English counties of Sussex and Worcestershire.
In 1996, Khan started a political party called the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf, inspired partly by his renewed commitment to Islam and with a mandate to end poverty and wipe out corruption in Pakistan.
Around the same time, he opened the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust Cancer Hospital in memory of his mother who had died from the disease. Today it has won international recognition as one of the leading institutions for free cancer treatment in the world.
