{"id":111914,"date":"2021-02-21T17:10:42","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T00:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=111914"},"modified":"2021-02-21T17:10:42","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T00:10:42","slug":"educated-international-cricketer-turned-politician-of-pakistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/02\/21\/educated-international-cricketer-turned-politician-of-pakistan\/","title":{"rendered":"Educated International Cricketer Turned Politician of Pakistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rohan Abeygunawardena, Nugegoda<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Imran Khan, the present Prime Minister of Pakistan scheduled\nto visit Sri Lanka on February 22 on a two day official visit. He will hold\ndiscussions with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Mahinda\nRajapaksa, and Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena. He was also schedule to\naddress Sri Lanka Parliament but later it was cancelled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was the only international cricketer to become a prime\nminister in the world. Born after the partition, in an affluent family in\nLahore Imran completed his schooling in the Royal Grammar School of Worcester,\nEngland where he pursued cricket for the first time and excelled at it. His\ntalent in bowling earned him a place in the Worcestershire County at a very\nearly age. He was selected for Pakistan test team at age 18, in a 1971 Test\nseries against England<\/a>. Khan played until 1992, served as the\nteam’s captain<\/a> intermittently between 1982 and\n1992. Under his leadership Pakistan won the Cricket World\nCup<\/a> in 1992. This was Pakistan’s first and only victory in the\ncompetition. Having a beautiful free flowing bowling action he could swing the\nball both ways with the new ball as well as the old.  He also mastered the\nreverse-swing to decimate the clueless oppositions. On the other hand he was\neven accused of ball-tampering, the use of foreign substances on the ball,\nraising the seam of the ball, and deliberate roughening of the surface to\nachieve the conditions for reverse-swing by force, citing the reason that there\nwas never a law disallowing him from altering the condition of the ball. Since\nthen law has been changed and now ball tampering is an offence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was also a dependable middle order batsman. In the ’92 World Cup, due to an\ninexperienced batting order, he promoted himself to the top of the order and\nplayed the new ball exceedingly well to reinforce his reputation as one of the\nmost versatile and holistic all-rounders of his generation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He played 88 tests and scored 3807 runs at an average of 37.7\nand he has 6 centuries to his credit. He has also taken 362 test wickets at an\naverage of 22.8. In ODI he scored 3709 runs in 175 matches at an average of\n33.4 and taken 182 wickets at an average of 26.6. He has a very impressive\nstrike rate of 73% in ODI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Captain Imran Khan and his team nearly pulled out of\nPakistan\u2019s first tour of Sri Lanka in 1986. This was due to bad umpiring in the\nabsence of Mahinda Wijesinghe\u2019s third umpire concept or Senaka Weeraratne\u2019s\nDecision Review System (DRS). Fortunately Sri Lanka\u2019s then President J.R. Jayawrdene\nand Pakistan President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq intervened and saved the series. President\nJ.R. Jayewardene called President Zia-ul-Haq to inform Your Excellency,\nthese 22 fools in flannels trying to disrupt the good relations between our two\ncountries. Therefore I am ordering Pakistan team to stay and get on with the\ngame.\u201d<\/strong> What Jayewardene\nsaid was true for Sri Lanka and Pakistan had a very good relationship then. Pakistan\nprovided arms and ammunition and training to our armed forces to fight\nterrorism and to convert from a ceremonial outfit to professional force. Under\nthe leadership of General Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan provided moral support to our country at\ninternational forums against the adverse propaganda by India and Tamil diaspora.\nIt was a well-known fact that India under Mrs. Indira Gandhi\u2019s premiership\nprovided logistic support and training for Tamil insurgents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prime\nminister Imran Khan excelled in studies as well. From 1972 to 1975, he studied Politics,\nEconomics and Philosophy in Kebble College, Oxford. He managed the workload of\ninternational cricket simultaneously to graduate with honours at the age of 23.\nAnd hence began an extraordinary journey. Khan was awarded an honorary fellowship by the Royal College of Physicians<\/a> in 2012 while serving as the Chancellor<\/a> of the University of\nBradford<\/a> between\n2005 and 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1991, he\nlaunched a fundraising campaign to set up a cancer hospital in memory of his\nmother. He raised $25 million to set up the hospital in Lahore in 1994,\nand set up a second hospital in Peshawar<\/a> in 2015. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Khan was\nelected Prime Minister in 2018.\nHis immediate concern\nwas the balance of payment crisis and the shrinking current account\ndeficit faced by Pakistan. He tackled these problems by negotiating a bailout\npackage from International Monetary Fund (IMF) and limiting military spending\nto curtail the fiscal deficit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Khan\npropagated for an increase in renewable\nenergy production<\/a> with\nan aim to make Pakistan mostly renewable by 2030. He also initiated reforestation<\/a> and expansion of national parks. He\nenacted policy which increased tax\ncollection<\/a> and investment<\/a>. His government also\ninstituted reforms to education and healthcare on a national and\nregional level respectively. Some reforms were made to Pakistan’s social safety\nnet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This educated international cricketer turned politician unfortunately\nvisiting Sri Lanka at a time our own cricket team is in doldrums. Our young\nminister of sports should get some advice from this great all-rounder on how to\nrevamp our cricket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zindabad Prime Minister Imran Khan!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rohan Abeygunawardena,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nugegoda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rohan Abeygunawardena, Nugegoda Imran Khan, the present Prime Minister of Pakistan scheduled to visit Sri Lanka on February 22 on a two day official visit. He will hold discussions with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, and Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena. He was also schedule to address Sri Lanka Parliament but later it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}