IMRAN KHAN

 The prime minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, in full Imran Ahmad Khan, (born October 5, 1952, in Lahore, Pakistan), Pakistani cricket player, politician, philanthropist, and prime minister of Pakistan (2018–22) who became a national hero by leading Pakistan’s national team to a Cricket World Cup victory in 1992 and later entered politics as a critic of government corruption in Pakistan. Early life and cricket career Khan was born into an affluent Pashtun family in Lahore and was educated at elite schools in Pakistan and the United Kingdom, including the Royal Grammar School in Worcester and Aitcheson College in Lahore. There were several accomplished cricket players in his family, including two elder cousins, Jawed Burke and Majid Khan, who both served as captains of the Pakistani national team. Imran Khan played cricket in Pakistan and the United Kingdom in his teens and continued playing while studying philosophy, politics, and economics at the University of Oxford. Khan played his first match for Pakistan’s national team in 1971, but he did not take a permanent place on the team until after he graduated from Oxford in 1976. By the early 1980s, Khan had distinguished himself as an exceptional bowler and all-rounder, and he was named captain of the Pakistani team in 1982. Khan’s athletic talent and good looks made him a celebrity in Pakistan and England, and his regular appearances at fashionable London nightclubs provided fodder for the British tabloid press. In 1992 Khan achieved his greatest athletic success when he led the Pakistani team to its first World Cup title, defeating England in the final. He retired that same year, having secured a reputation as one of the greatest cricket players in history. After 1992 Khan remained in the public eye as a philanthropist. He experienced a religious awakening, embracing Sufi mysticism and shedding his earlier playboy image. In one of his philanthropic endeavors, Khan acted as the primary fund-raiser for the Cancer Hospital, a specialized cancer hospital in Lahore, which opened in 1994. The hospital was named after Khan’s mother, who had died of cancer in 1985.

Entry into politics:

 After he retired from cricket, Khan became an outspoken critic of government mismanagement and corruption in Pakistan. He founded his political party, Pakistan (Pakistan Justice Movement; PTI), in 1996. In national elections held the following year, the newly formed party won less than 1 percent of the vote and failed to win any seats in the National Assembly, but it fared slightly better in the 2002 elections, winning a single seat that Khan filled. Khan maintained that vote rigging was to blame for his party’s low vote totals. In October 2007 Khan was among a group of politicians who resigned from the National Assembly, protesting Pres. Musharraf’s candidacy in the upcoming presidential election. In November, Khan was briefly imprisoned during a crackdown against critics of Musharraf, who had declared a state of emergency. The PTI condemned the state of emergency, which ended in mid-December, and boycotted the 2008 national elections to protest Musharraf’s rule.