Tag Archive for ‘Imran Khan’ at Asian Window

Tag Archive for 'Imran Khan'

The froth of Khan

Published

on January 31, 2010

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Nadeem F. Paracha at Dawn:

What can one say about Imran Khan? A great former cricketer, a compassionate philanthropist … a sorry excuse for a politician. But his continuing forays into bad politics and tactical blunders can be excused, for he is yet to understand that politics is not a game of cricket, and that the democratic election process does not follow the selection policy he enforced as the captain of the Pakistan cricket squad.

The truth is, Khan’s penchant for picking up talented players seemed to have gone haywire when he decided to pick his early political mentors.

Coming from a highly educated, cultivated, and somewhat liberal background, Khan had slipped into reverse gear by the time he decided to enter politics in the early 1990s. In other words, instead of looking forward to becoming an integral part of a new, democratic, and General Zia-less Pakistan, Khan struck an ideological partnership with shadowy characters who were hell-bent on keeping the country stuck in the 1980s – a decade when Pakistan pulled and damaged all of its important political, economic and social muscles under the stressful weight of a myopic dictatorship and the damaging jihad that a dictatorship sponsored in Afghanistan. More:

The making of Imran

Published

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on October 2, 2009

in Books, Cricket and Sport

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Saad Shafqat reviews “Imran Khan: The Cricketer, The Celebrity, The Politician” by Christopher Sandford (Harpercollins) at cricinfo:

Don’t be fooled by what you read in the press and hear in the media. In Pakistan it was decided long ago that he can do no wrong. He took those 12 wickets in Sydney, bowled that immortal afternoon spell of reverse swing in Karachi, stared the West Indies down on their home turf, led the cornered tigers in 1992. In short, he ushered Pakistan cricket into its golden era. And then there is the man. As any number of women would say, just look at him.

You would think this makes Imran Khan an irresistible biography subject – and you’d be right. There are very few autobiographies of Pakistani cricketers, and fewer biographies. Imran has become the focus now of a second worthy book (after Ivo Tenant’s Imran Khan, which appeared in 1994). The latest effort is by Christopher Sandford, a seasoned biographer who has previously tackled Godfrey Evans and Tom Graveney in addition to an august list from the world of music and film.

It is not strictly a cricket book, because Imran is not just a cricketer. There is naturally a great deal of cricket in it, but it is so seamlessly interwoven with general experiences of the human condition that this book can be read with equal enjoyment by die-hard fans and casual followers alike. Indeed, Imran transcended cricket in that many people with little interest in the game found themselves absorbed by his public image and personality. This book will appeal to them too. More:

Imran Khan and Benazir Bhutto had an affair: Book

Published

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on August 20, 2009

in Books and Cricket

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Benazir Bhutto and Imran Khan

A new biography of Imran Khan by Christopher Sandford has claimed the former international cricketer and Benazir Bhutto, the assassinated former Prime Minister of Pakistan, were romantically involved while they were both students at Oxford University. From the Telegraph:

The respected author, Christopher Sandford, has claimed that Bhutto became infatuated with Khan and the pair enjoyed a “close” and possibly “sexual” relationship.

He also alleges that Khan’s mother tried, unsuccessfully, to organise an arranged marriage between the pair.

Until now, it had always been believed that Khan and Bhutto had always been at loggerheads both politically and personally. Khan openly criticised the former prime minister just days before her death.

However, Sandford, who interviewed both Khan and his ex-wife Jemima for the book, claims a source told him that Bhutto was 21 and in her second year of reading politics at Lady Margaret Hall when she became close to Khan in 1975. More:

And in Daily Mail:

The ‘elegantly shod’ Bhutto, a fellow politics student, hooked up with Imran in 1975 when she was 21 and in her second year at Lady Margaret Hall. A mutual acquaintance told Sandford that Bhutto had been ‘visibly impressed’ by Imran, and that she might have been among the first to dub him ‘the Lion of Lahore’.

Says Sandford: ‘In any event, it seems fairly clear that, for at least a month or two, the couple were close. There was a lot of giggling and blushing whenever they appeared together in public.’

He adds: ‘It also seems fair to say that the relationship was “sexual”, in the sense that it could only have existed between a man and a woman. The reason some supposed it went further was because, to quote one Oxford friend: “Imran slept with everyone.” ‘

Imran Khan on Pakistan and politics, Taliban and terrorism

Published

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on March 9, 2009

in Pakistan and Politics

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In The Times, Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester meet Imran Khan, the former Pakistan cricket captain turned politician:

From the moment Mr Khan heard the news about this week’s attack in Lahore, he was convinced that Pakistani extremists were being made the scapegoats. “Almost all the terrorism taking place here since 2004 when Pakistan sent its army into the tribal areas has been suicide attacks. Last year there were over 100 suicide attacks – but they have a pattern. They are always in retaliation.”

This week’s ambush by 12 gunmen was, he says, different. “They had an escape route – it was well planned. I certainly don’t think this was done by ideological terrorists, motivated to blow themselves up.”

In his view a “foreign element” was almost certainly involved. “It could be India, Afghanistan, the Tamil Tigers. The motive is to damage the state of Pakistan and end cricket here. The shocking thing is that there was so little security for the players.”

Imran Khan’s bakeries fight Pakistan food crisis

Published

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on September 28, 2008

in Pakistan

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Bronwyn Curran from Lahore in The National:

A baker makes roti at a sasta tandoor run by Imran Khan. Photo: Matthew Tabaccos for The National

Imran Khan, Pakistan’s revered cricket hero who has transformed himself into the country’s angriest politician, forfeited a place in parliament when he boycotted February elections. Now he is doing what the crisis-burdened government is failing to: feeding the poor.

In depressed urban neighbourhoods of the Punjab, Pakistan’s most populated province, Mr Khan’s party, Tehreek-e-Insaf, has begun operating sasta tandoors (cheap tandoor bakeries), selling fresh roti and nan from traditional tandoor ovens for less than half the market rates.

Dark horse, white knight

Published

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on July 12, 2008

in Movies

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His arrival was dream-crafted by his uncle Aamir Khan, but Imran Khan, Bollywood’s new love, knows where he’s going. A profile in Tehelka:

The feverish speculation around a young person poised for stardom in Bollywood is one that only people who follow racehorses would understand: the endless studying of form, of bloodlines, of gossip from the stable. There’s no telling which odds-on favourite will stumble, or which robust survivor of indifference will astonish on a Friday evening. And somewhere in the center, almost obscured by the harsh light and gathering crowds, is the one who must run.

Imran Khan, star of Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, the freshest romantic comedy we have seen in years, will never have a week like this again. In a week, he has gone from complete anonymity to Aamir Khan’s nephew to someone whose girlfriend’s romantic history is being read about across the country. On the streets in Mumbai one evening, an autograph-hunter magically multiplied into an alarming mob. A woman threw herself at him begging him to marry her. And all this before Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na actually hit the theatres, all this only because of his astonishing good looks. Once audiences sampled Jaane Tu’s soufflé-like charm, there was no holding back the enamoured hordes. And somewhere in the centre is a 25-year-old who rarely speaks a superfluous, thoughtless word.

An extraordinary encounter with Musharraf

Published

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on February 18, 2008

in Pakistan

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Jemima Khan is granted a rare interview with Pervez Musharraf. In The Independent, UK:

‘Since you were so kind as to greet us in London at Downing Street last month, the President would like to return the favour,” announces Major-General Rashid Qureshi, President Pervez Musharraf’s PR man over the phone. Only in Pakistan could the government’s head of spin be a retired major-general. He is referring to my last encounter with the President on 28 January – when, along with a 2,000-strong, placard-waving, slogan-jeering mob, I protested on the main road outside 10 Downing Street while Musharraf discussed democracy with Gordon Brown over lunch inside. On the way in he waved at us. Clearly he’s a man who is not afraid of confrontation. Much to the justifiable fury of every journalist in Islamabad, he has now granted me an exclusive half-hour interview despite or perhaps because of the fact that I have recently described him as one of the most repressive dictators Pakistan has ever known.

Pakistani elections are excellent value for the spectator. There are the huge, colourful jalsas (rallies) providing free entertainment; the raucous but generally good-humoured demonstrations at which effigy-burning is a staple; the slanderous mud-slinging between candidates who will soon be making expedient last-minute deals with each other; and the endless titillating conspiracy theories.

As the wife and constant Achilles’ heel of a hapless former contestant, I, too, have been in the line of fire. In 2002, I was apparently a Rushdie-loving apostate after admitting I had read his novel Shame. The previous time, I was a Zionist conspirator with a £40m election budget provided by my (half) Jewish father to further the cause of Israel. Yet the fact that Pakistan has become a nation of conspiracy theorists is hardly surprising, given the decades of fraudulent and mendacious politics.

Power games

Published

asianwindow

on January 29, 2008

in Pakistan

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He’s been here, there and everywhere this past week — holding noisy demonstrations against Pervez Musharraf’s meeting with Gordon Brown in London; speaking out against the regime at the Asia Society in New York and castigating the Bush government for propping up the Musharraf government at the National Press Club in Washington.

So why has Imran Khan remained on the fringes of Pakistan politics? Do sportsmen make good politicians and could Imran be the man to watch writes Tunku Vardarajan in a December profile for the Financial Times

Imran Khan is a very unusual man. An arrogantly wonderful cricketer – a former captain of Pakistan and candidate for any all-time cricket dream-team – he is now so immersed in his country’s opposition politics that he was thrown into jail for a few days last month by General Pervez Musharraf.

Khan’s singularity, firstly, has to do with the fact that not many sportsmen go into politics. They ply different trades, athletes and politicians, each demanding great dedication to get to the top. Who straddles the two seemingly unconnected worlds? Sebastian Coe, perhaps, in the contemporary era?

A former middle-distance runner, he is now a Conservative member of the House of Lords, though few regarded him as a serious politician (except perhaps William Hague, his one-time boss and jiu-jitsu sparring partner).

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Pakistan is a ‘chick’ magnet

Published

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on January 18, 2008

in Pakistan and Society

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Smita Prakash of ANI on what makes Pakistani men so appealing

Britney Spears, the once hot and happening blonde pop star, has a Pakistani boyfriend Adnan Ghalib, wants to convert to Islam and move to Pakistan.

Princess Diana’s great love was a British doctor of Pakistani origin, Hasnat Khan, whom she desperately wanted to marry say her friends and live in Pakistan. Jemima Khan, the lush lipped, luxurious maned blonde, actually married a Pakistani, the hottie Imran Khan and lived in Pakistan, covering her head and wearing diaphanous salwar kameezes. What is it with blonde beauties and Pakistani men? Why is Pakistan such a chick magnet?

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