Tag: Cricket World Cup

As a politician, he is thundering towards the election on July 25th and appears to be on the point of scoring another famous victory. Polls suggest his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), may emerge as the largest; and Mr Khan may well become the country’s next prime minister. Yet, as a pukka sportsman, can Mr Khan really be happy? The army is ensuring that the PTI enjoys privileged access to media, endorsements from powerful people and defections from rival parties. The khaki umpire Whether in the 1970s in the era of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, or in the 1990s during Mr Sharif’s earlier terms, the army’s “jeep-wallahs” first endorsed and promoted pliant civilian leaders, then squeezed them when they grew too independent, and in the end got rid of them. By returning to Pakistan to face jail, Mr Sharif has turned himself from a grubby politician into something of a martyr. Nobody quite knows why the army turned against him. Mr Khan, for his part, started off posing as an anti-establishment politician, railing against the corrupt duopoly of PML-N and its rival, the Pakistan Peoples Party, founded by Bhutto and later led by his daughter, Benazir, who was assassinated in 2007. Pakistani voters may yet rebuke the generals. It has lagged ever further behind India economically and on other fronts—including cricket.