By Staff Reporter
KARACHI: Seven former Australia cricket captains have written directly to foreign minister Penny Wong urging her to press Pakistan’s government over the treatment of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, in an unusually direct intervention by some of the sport’s most decorated figures into the political fate of one of their own.
The letter, reported by ESPNcricinfo on Tuesday, was signed by Allan Border, Greg Chappell, Ian Chappell, Belinda Clark, Kim Hughes, Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh — a roll call spanning five decades of Australian cricket captaincy. Khan, the 73-year-old founder of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, has been in custody since August 2023 and was convicted last year, alongside his wife Bushra Bibi, on corruption charges carrying a 17-year sentence. Both have consistently denied the charges against them.
The former captains were careful to frame their intervention as apolitical, telling Wong they wrote “not as diplomats or political figures, but as former captains who felt compelled to speak up.” The group stated explicitly that it took no position on the legal or political case against Khan, calling that “a matter for Pakistan alone.” Their concern, they said, lay solely with how any detained person is treated — something they described as “a matter of basic humanity, whatever their politics.”
A spokesperson for Wong confirmed to the Sydney Morning Herald that Australia “regularly raises” Khan’s case in its dealings with Islamabad, adding that Canberra “continues to encourage authorities to ensure appropriate medical care is available to him.”
Supreme Court order followed by hospital switch
The letter to Wong is the latest in a string of interventions by current and former cricketers that has built steadily over the course of the year, and comes weeks after Pakistan’s Supreme Court became directly involved in Khan’s medical care.
On 18 August, a three-member bench of the Supreme Court ordered authorities at Adiala jail to transfer Khan to Islamabad’s Shifa International Hospital, a private facility, within two days, so he could be examined and treated by a multidisciplinary medical board. That order was not followed to the letter: Khan was instead taken to the government-run Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), though information minister Attaullah Tarar said doctors from Shifa International were also present at the assessment.
Islamabad has pushed back firmly against suggestions that Khan is being mistreated. The government maintains that his detention is “governed by the Pakistan Prison Rules, applicable judicial directions and security arrangements appropriate to a high-profile prisoner,” and has rejected claims that he has been subjected to punitive solitary confinement, cruelty or deprivation.
A widening campaign from the game’s biggest names
Tuesday’s letter builds on an appeal sent on 23 August, when 22 former international captains — among them Border, both Chappell brothers, Waugh, Clark and Hughes — wrote to prime minister Shehbaz Sharif directly, asking that Khan’s treatment be brought into line with what the Supreme Court had already directed.
That letter set out three specific requests: that the medical board ordered by the court, including physicians of Khan’s own choosing, be allowed to carry out a complete and independent health assessment, with particular attention to reported vision loss in his right eye; that weekly family visits, reinstated by court order, continue without interruption or administrative delay; and that any treatment the board recommended be provided promptly, whatever it turned out to be.
“Imran Khan is 73 years old and has now spent more than three years in custody,” the captains wrote. “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.”
That August appeal itself followed an earlier letter in February, when 14 former international captains first raised concerns about Khan’s welfare. Indian greats Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev were among the signatories on that occasion, joining Border, the Chappells, Waugh, Clark and Hughes in calling for improved prison conditions for a player they described as “one of the finest all-rounders” the game has produced.
Concern has not been limited to overseas figures. Former Pakistan captains Javed Miandad, Wasim Akram and Moin Khan have all spoken publicly about Khan’s health, while Pat Cummins, the current Australia captain, has also lent his voice to calls for him to receive proper medical care.
Khan’s standing in the game — as the captain who led Pakistan to their only World Cup title, in 1992 — appears to have given the campaign for his welfare a reach across generations and borders that few political prisoners could command.
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