Ex-cricket captains urge Pakistan to provide proper medical care for jailed Imran Khan

Twenty-one former international cricket captains have signed a letter to Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif demanding that the government comply with a court order to provide proper medical care for Imran Khan, the 73-year-old ex-prime minister who has been imprisoned since August 2023. The signatories—a roster that includes Indian batting legend Sunil Gavaskar, England's Alastair Cook and Michael Atherton, Australian captains Steve Waugh and Adam Gilchrist, and others who spent their careers as rivals on the field—framed their intervention as a matter of basic human decency rather than politics.

Khan, who captained Pakistan's cricket team before entering politics and serving as prime minister from 2018 to 2022, has been held on corruption charges that he and his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, insist are politically motivated. He faces charges in more than 100 cases, ranging from allegations of leaking state secrets to selling state gifts. His imprisonment has triggered sustained protests by supporters, which authorities have met with force. But the immediate catalyst for the captains' letter is Khan's deteriorating health and what they describe as the government's failure to honor a Supreme Court directive.

Last week, Pakistan's highest court ordered that Khan be transferred to a private hospital for medical assessment by independent physicians, including his own doctors. Instead, authorities took him to a government-run facility in Islamabad, where state-appointed doctors examined him for only a few hours, declared him "medically fit," and returned him to prison. Khan's legal team has filed a contempt petition against the government, arguing that the court's order was circumvented. The captains' letter echoes this concern, laying out three specific demands: that Khan undergo a full medical assessment by a board directed by the Supreme Court and including his personal physicians—particularly to evaluate reported vision loss in his right eye; that his family be allowed weekly visits without interruption or administrative delay, as the court has ordered; and that any recommended treatment be provided without delay.

Khan's lawyer has stated that his client has retained only 15 percent vision in his right eye, a loss he attributes to the prison's failure to provide adequate medical attention. At 73 years old and having spent more than three years in custody, Khan's health has become a focal point of international concern. The letter, initiated by former Australian captain Greg Chappell, emphasizes that the signatories are "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." Fourteen of the same captains had already signed an earlier appeal in February calling for humane treatment and proper medical care.

The intervention by this group of sporting figures represents a rare moment of unified international pressure on Pakistan's government. These are not activists or politicians making the case, but figures whose authority derives from their standing in a sport that commands deep loyalty across South Asia and beyond. Their message is deliberately restrained—they are not arguing Khan's innocence or the validity of the charges against him, only that a court order for medical assessment should be honored. Yet the very fact that such prominent figures felt compelled to write, and that they chose to emphasize the universality of basic medical care as a principle that transcends political dispute, underscores how the case has come to be seen as a test of whether Pakistan's government will respect its own judiciary's orders.