By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: Twenty-two former international cricketers, including 21 who captained their countries, have written to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, urging his government to comply fully with a Supreme Court order on the medical treatment of the jailed former prime minister Imran Khan.
The letter, reported by ESPN Cricinfo, is signed by some of the sport’s most recognisable names, among them Sunil Gavaskar, Steve Waugh, Kapil Dev, Allan Border, Adam Gilchrist and Nasser Hussain. It calls on the Pakistani authorities to allow a court-mandated medical board — which includes Khan’s own doctors and his sister — to carry out a full and independent examination of his health, with particular concern for reported vision loss in his right eye.
Khan, 73, has been in custody since August 2023 and has been convicted in a series of cases that he maintains were politically motivated, brought after his removal from office in a parliamentary no-confidence vote in April 2022. His health, and the conditions of his detention at Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, have become an increasingly urgent point of contention between his party and the government.
The former England captain Michael Atherton and his predecessor Michael Brearley are among the signatories, alongside the West Indies great Clive Lloyd, Sri Lanka’s Arjuna Ranatunga and the former India captains Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, both of whom shared the 1983 World Cup stage as rivals. Also on the letter are Alastair Cook, Andrew Strauss, Michael Gatting and David Gower for England; Border, Ian and Greg Chappell, Kim Hughes and Waugh for Australia; Alex Blackwell and Belinda Clark, representing the women’s game; and Lee Germon and John Wright of New Zealand, along with Dilip Vengsarkar of India.
Supreme Court order
The letter follows a ruling by Pakistan’s Supreme Court on 18 August, which directed the government to transfer Khan to Shifa International Hospital, a private facility in Islamabad, within 48 hours so that he could be examined and treated by a multidisciplinary medical board. The court also ordered that weekly family visits, which had been suspended, be reinstated.
According to the cricketers’ letter, neither instruction was properly carried out. Khan was taken not to Shifa International but to the government-run Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, where — the letter states — his stay lasted only a few hours. Rather than being seen by the board named in the court’s order, he was examined by a state-appointed medical team, declared “medically fit”, and returned to Adiala jail before the independent board could complete its work.
It has separately been reported that Khan was unable to undergo a recommended computed tomography angiography, a scan used to investigate blood vessel problems, because Pims did not have the necessary equipment available.
“Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered that Imran Khan be transferred to hospital for examination by a medical board that was to include his own personal physicians and his sister, Dr Uzma Khan,” the letter states. “The court also reinstated weekly family visits. These were very welcome steps.” The cricketers go on to describe what followed as a failure to honour those steps in practice.
Three requests
The letter sets out three specific requests to the prime minister: that the medical board ordered by the Supreme Court, including Khan’s own physicians, be permitted to complete a full and independent assessment of his health; that the weekly family visits reinstated by the court continue without interruption or administrative delay; and that any treatment recommended following that assessment be provided to Khan without further delay.
The signatories are careful to frame their appeal in personal rather than political terms. “Not as politicians, but as former colleagues and rivals who share a bond forged on the cricket field,” they write, adding that they do not seek to involve themselves in Pakistan’s domestic legal processes.
It is not the first time many of the same players have raised concerns about Khan’s welfare. In February, several of the signatories wrote separately to express what they called “deep concern” about his treatment and prison conditions, urging the authorities to guarantee immediate and adequate medical care, dignified treatment and unimpeded access to legal proceedings.
Khan’s eye condition, a right central retinal vein occlusion, first came to light in late January, since when he has been taken to hospital on several occasions. His party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, has repeatedly accused the government of failing to be transparent about his medical care, an allegation the government disputes. The exchange has hardened into a broader standoff between the two sides over the former prime minister’s treatment in custody, one that shows little sign of resolution.
Khan remains Pakistan’s most prominent political prisoner, and a figure whose fate continues to divide opinion at home even as, in cricket, his standing as one of the game’s great all-rounders and a World Cup-winning captain remains largely undisputed. It is that dual legacy — statesman and cricketer — that appears to have prompted an unusually broad and senior group of his former sporting peers to put their names to a single letter.
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