Cricket legends demand proper medical care for jailed ex-PM Imran Khan

Imran Khan sits in a Pakistani prison cell at 73 years old, his vision in his right eye failing. Last week, a court ordered him transferred to a private hospital for a proper medical examination. Instead, authorities took him to a government facility in Islamabad, where state doctors examined him briefly—a few hours, his supporters say—declared him fit, and sent him back to his cell. The Supreme Court's directive went unheeded.

This week, twenty-one former cricket captains from around the world signed a letter to Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif demanding something they call "basic decency": that Khan receive the medical assessment the courts have already ordered. The signatories include some of the sport's most recognizable names—Sunil Gavaskar of India, England's Alastair Cook, Michael Atherton, and Andrew Strauss, Australia's Steve Waugh and Adam Gilchrist, among others. They are men who played against Khan, who knew him as a rival and a colleague, who understand what it means to compete at the highest level of international sport.

Khan's detention began in August 2023 on corruption charges he categorically denies. Since then, he has faced accusations in more than one hundred cases—leaking state secrets, selling state gifts, charges that his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, describes as a coordinated campaign of persecution. Over three years in custody, his health has deteriorated. His right eye has lost nearly all its vision. His lawyers say prison authorities failed to act when the problem first emerged, allowing it to worsen. When Khan's own doctors tried to examine him, they were blocked. When the Supreme Court intervened, ordering a medical board that would include his personal physicians, the government circumvented the order.

The letter from the cricket captains lays out three specific demands. First: that Khan be assessed by a medical board under Supreme Court supervision, with his own doctors present, particularly regarding his vision loss. Second: that his family be allowed weekly visits without obstruction or delay, as the court has already mandated. Third: that any treatment recommended by the board be provided immediately, without bureaucratic postponement. The language is measured, almost apologetic in its restraint. "Whatever the legal and political arguments surrounding his case," the letter reads, "the basic decency of ensuring a court-ordered medical process is actually completed is not, in our view, a controversial request."

Fourteen of these same former captains had already signed an earlier appeal in February, calling for humane treatment and proper medical care. That appeal went largely unheeded. Now they are trying again, this time with a broader coalition and a more direct address to the Prime Minister. They describe themselves as "former colleagues and rivals who share a bond forged on the cricket field," a bond that "transcends the borders and disputes that too often divide countries." It is a careful invocation of cricket's supposed universality—the idea that the sport creates connections that supersede nationalism, that a shared understanding of competition and respect can bridge even deep political divides.

Khan's imprisonment has triggered sustained protests from his supporters, met with security force crackdowns. His case has become a flashpoint in Pakistani politics, a symbol of what his party views as authoritarian overreach and what the government views as necessary accountability. The intervention of international cricket figures adds a new dimension—not a legal one, but a moral one, a reminder that Khan was once a figure of global sporting significance, that his detention is being watched beyond Pakistan's borders, that the world's attention, however briefly, is fixed on what happens to him.

The Supreme Court has already spoken. The medical examination has already been ordered. What remains unclear is whether the government will comply, whether Khan will actually see his own doctors, whether his vision loss will be properly assessed and treated. The cricket captains have made their request. Now Pakistan must decide whether to honor its own court's directive, or whether to continue the pattern of obstruction that has defined Khan's three years in custody.