Thursday, 7 February 2013

Imran Khan

source (google.com.pk)
Imran Khan Biography
Date of Birth : November 25, 1952
Place of Birth : Mianwali
He is from the Niazi Pashtun Shermankhel tribe of Mianwali. His family is settled in Lahore, however, he still considers his background Pathan as per his autobiography (Warrior Race: A Journey through the Land of the Tribal Pathans).

Imran attended Aitcheson College and the Cathedral School in Lahore until he finished middle school, then entered the Royal Grammar School, Worcester, before completing his formal schooling with an undergraduate degree in Economics from Keble College, Oxford.

While at University, Imran Khan was also the captain of the Oxford University cricket team in 1974. He and his mother, Shaukat Khanum, come from a cricketing family – the Burkis, with two of his cousins, Javed Burki and Majid Khan, also having played Test cricket for Pakistan.

He is the finest cricketer Pakistan has ever produced, who is among the finest all-rounders and greatest fast bowlers the game has ever seen. He played Test cricket for Pakistan between 1971 and 1992, and was captain of the national team when they won their maiden World Cup in 1992.

After retiring from cricket, Imran Khan founded the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital & Research Centre in Lahore.

In 1997, he started a socio-political movement known as the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice). The main focus of his party is to bring justice to the people of Pakistan, largely via an independent judiciary. The party has Islamic overtones and is inspired partly by Imran Khan’s renewed commitment to Islam.

As a politician, his vision is to turn Pakistan into a just society, based on humane values, by creating an independent and honest judiciary that will uphold democracy, protect human rights and ensure the rule of law and, by promoting a merit based system that provides equal opportunity for upward social mobility to the working classes. His political ideal is the famous poet-philosopher, Allama Dr Muhammad Iqbal.

Talking to Daily Telegraph of England about his political goal, Imran Khan said: “I want Pakistan to be a welfare state and a genuine democracy with a rule of law and an independent judiciary. We need decentralisation, empowering people at the grassroots.”

He became a Member of Parliament for Mianwali in the October 2002 elections. He is very critical of the judicial system in Pakistan, which he says prevents accountability for the elite class. Initially he supported 1999 military coup of General Pervez Musharraf but late came in to the forefront against General Musharraf.

In 2005, as leader of his party Imran led a protest rally against the US-led coalition for allegedly desecrating the Holy Quran and made statements denouncing the Musharraf-Bush coalition. During the visit of US President George W Bush to Pakistan in 2006, he was the only politician to attempt to hold a rally against Bush. The rally was stopped and Imran Khan was detained by the police.

Imran Khan is also a special representative of UNICEF and Chancellor of Bradford University. His honours include Hilal-i-Imtiaz (Crescent of Excellence) in 1993 by the Pakistani government; Honorary Fellow of Keble College, Oxford and Wisden Cricketer of the Year 1983.

In 1995 he married Jemima Khan, the daughter of the late British billionaire Sir James Goldsmith. Jemima Khan embraced Islam before she married Khan. They announced their divorce on June 22, 2004. They have two sons named Suleman Khan (born on November 10, 1999) and Qasim Khan. He is alleged to have a daughter out of wedlock with Sita White, daughter of Lord Gordy White, a few years before he married Jemima Goldsmith. A US judge ruled him to be the father of Tyrian White after he failed to appear for a DNA test.

Although there are little achievements to credit of Imran Khan in the political arena, there is a long list of his achievements in the sport of cricket. He has the third highest best-ever bowling rating of 922 (1983) in Test cricket history behind S F Barnes’s 932 (1914) and G A Lohmann’s 931 (1896).

Imran Khan is pioneer of the art of reverse swing. He was one of the fastest bowlers ever to grace the game. Michael Holding, the great West Indian fast bowler and commentator, when asked in an interview with Cricinfo who the best bowlers he came up against were, said: “In my time, it was Dennis Lillee and Imran Khan. They had pace and they could do things with the ball. You had others who got a lot of wickets, but you wouldn’t say that they were fast. Imran … could intimidate people out with his pace and also get them with movement, especially into the right-hander.”

In the cricket world, Imran Khan is renowned for his leadership skills as a captain. Under his captaincy, Pakistan won the 1992 Cricket World Cup. Under his captaincy Pakistan drew three series with West Indies at a time when everybody else was being whitewashed by West Indies. He always led from the front and five of six Test hundreds and 14 of his 18 fifties came in 48 Tests as captain. His average during that time was 52.34, higher than the averages of Ian Chappell, Clive Lloyd, Steve Waugh, Gavaskar and Javed Miandad. Imran averaged 20.26 with the ball and four of his six 10-wicket hauls came as captain.

As a captain, he transformed the Pakistan team, previously known for its exceptional talent but lack of coherence into a well-moulded unit. He played his last Test match for Pakistan in January 1992 against Sri Lanka at Faisalabad and last ODI being the World Cup final against England at Melbourne in March 1992 resulting in the World Cup glory and triumph for Pakistan.

In 2000, Wisden organised a panel to vote for Wisden Cricketers of the Century who were judged to be the most prominent players of the 20th century, as selected by a 100-member panel of cricket experts appointed by Wisden Cricketers’ Almanac in 2000. In order of votes, the Wisden Cricketers of the Century, Imran Khan was number 10 on the list.

Along with Garfield Sobers, Ian Botham, Kapil Dev and Richard Hadlee, he achieved the ‘All-rounder’s triple’ (3000 runs and 300 wickets) in 75 Tests, the second fewest behind Botham’s 72, though statistically and qualitatively Imran Khan is superior to Botham in every aspect of the game except perhaps slip catching. He was one of the fastest bowlers of the world during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and in the later half of his career, one of the best batsmen in the Pakistan cricket team. He has the second highest average of all time for a Test batsman batting at number 6.

In April 2007, Imran Khan was voted as the greatest all-rounder in a readers’ poll by Cricinfo. He received 37 per cent of the votes, beating Sir Garfield Sobers who was second with 14 per cent out of the 20 all-rounders Cricinfo had selected. Incidentally Cricinfo panel chose Sobers as the greatest all-rounder independent of the poll. According to the panel, Imran Khan was Sobers’ closest rival amongst the quartet of great all-rounders (Imran, Botham, Hadlee, Kapil).

After retiring from cricket, Imran Khan founded the state-of-the-art Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Centre in Lahore on December 29, 1994. One of the leading institutions for free cancer treatment in the world, it is an international standard institution and is free for poor people. The World Health Organisation awarded the United Arab Emirates Foundation Prize for 2004 to Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital. He is building another cancer hospital in Karachi.

Imran Khan is also the Chairman of the Mianwali Development Trust, which is building the Namal College in Mianwali as an associate college of Bradford University. The first phase of the college buildings has been completed.

Imran Khan, perhaps first Pakistani, is the Chancellor of the University of Bradford since December 7, 2005. He said the fifth Chancellor of the university and is also a patron of the Born in Bradford research project.

After imposition of the state of emergency by General Musharraf on November 3, 2007, Imran Khan was put under house arrest but his succeeded in slipping away. However, he was arrested from the University of Punjab campus in Lahore a few days later with help of the Islami Jamiat-e-Talba, student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami. On November 19, 2007, he let out the word through his party members and family that he had begun a hunger strike. He was one of the 3,000 political prisoners released from imprisonment on November 21, 2007.

In 1976 and 1980, Imran Khan was awarded the Cricket Society Wetherall Award. He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2004 Asian Jewel Awards in London, UK.
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Shoaib Malik

Source (google.com.pk)
Shoaib Malik Biography
There is almost no role in a cricket side that Shoaib Malik hasn't filled, so much so that over ten years into his career, nobody is sure what his precise and best role is.

In essence, he is a batting allrounder, though he started his career as an off-break bowler. Partly the problem is that he is capable, as a batsman, of fulfilling many roles with some competence. He has had success as an opener in Tests and ODIs; he has been game-changing as a limited-overs one down and dangerous as a lower-order slogger; often he has been a stodgy middle-order bulwark. In Twenty20s, he can be brutal anywhere.

It is thus difficult to recall a definitive Malik high; was it his maiden Test hundred as an opener against Sri Lanka in Colombo? A few hands that led to an ODI series win against India in 2005-06? A Champions Trophy hundred against India?

His basic game is tight, especially in the subcontinent. He isn't pretty, though there can be pleasantness in his high, stiff-elbowed drives and lofts. Square on both sides he is precise. Further, he runs well. With his flattish, very modern off-spin always useful for more than a few overs and a wicket here and there - less so after concerns over his action - and an athletic and languid presence in the field, Malik should be far greater a sum of his parts than he actually is.

He was for long earmarked as a potential captain - the late Bob Woolmer thought him the sharpest tack in Pakistan's set-up - but a stint with the captaincy was troubled, unimaginative and ended badly. It got even worse when the board banned him for a year in March 2010 as part of its unprecedented action on senior players after a disastrous tour of Australia.
Shoaib Malik
Shoaib Malik
Shoaib Malik
Shoaib Malik
Shoaib Malik
Shoaib Malik
Shoaib Malik
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Shoaib Malik
Shoaib Malik


Saeed Ajmal

Source(google.com.pk)
Saeed Ajmal Biography
A modern-day offspinner who relies on the doosra as much as on other variations of flight and speed, Saeed Ajmal made a relatively late entry into international cricket, at the age of 30, but is doing his best to make up for lost time, quickly moving up to be regarded among the best spinners in the game today. Ajmal didn't play his first Test till almost 32, but showed immediately that he belonged, taking five wickets in his debut Test against Sri Lanka in Galle in 2009.

His golden run, though, started in 2011, when he showed superb control over all his variations - the offspinner, the doosra and the subtle changes in speed and flight. Unlike many offspinners who change their line when bowling the doosra, Ajmal tends to bowl the offspinner and the doosra from around the same line - on or just outside off - which makes it much tougher for batsmen to pick his variations. In 2011 he was the leading wicket-taker in Tests, with 50 in eight matches. But the best series of his young career came early in 2012, when he destroyed the batting line-up of the best team in the world, England, taking 24 wickets in just three games at 14.70. In the process, he clearly won the battle of offspinners against the highly rated Graeme Swann.

However, Ajmal first made his mark in international cricket in ODIs. He was called up for the 2008 Asia Cup, and soon after he had the Australians completely bewildered in the ODI series in the UAE; he gave away few runs and his doosra was almost unreadable. The ICC called him for his action, though it was cleared soon after. The pressure didn't get to him and immediately after, he played a crucial role in Pakistan's drive to the 2009 World Twenty20 title, regularly bottling up the middle overs with Shahid Afridi. He ended the joint second-highest wicket-taker in the tournament, with an exemplary economy rate as batsmen around the world struggled to get a read on his bag of tricks.
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Inzamam-ul-Haq

source(google.com.pk)
Inzamam-ul-Haq Biography
Inzamam-ul-Haq is a symbiosis of strength and subtlety. Power is no surprise, but sublime touch is remarkable for a man of his bulk. He loathes exercise and often looks a passenger in the field, but with a willow between his palms he is suddenly galvanised. He plays shots all round the wicket, is especially strong off his legs, and unleashes ferocious pulls and lofted drives. Imran Khan rates him the best batsman in the world against pace. Early on he is vulnerable playing across his front pad or groping outside off stump. He uses his feet well to the spinners, although this aggression can be his undoing. Inzi keeps a cool head in a crisis and has succeeded Javed Miandad as Pakistan's premier batsman, but his hapless running between wickets is legendary and most dangerous for his partners. There were no such problems against New Zealand at a boiling Lahore in 2001-02, when Inzamam belted 329, the second-highest Test score by a Pakistani and the tenth-highest by anyone. However, he was then dogged by poor form, scoring just 16 runs in Pakistan's ill-fated World Cup campaign in 2003.
He was dropped from the team briefly, but then roared back to form, scoring a magnificent unbeaten 138 and guiding Pakistan to a thrilling one-wicket win against Bangladesh at Multan. He was rewarded with the captaincy of the team, and despite leading them to victory in the Test series in New Zealand, question-marks about his leadership qualities surfaced when Pakistan were beaten in both the Test series and the one-dayers against India. But the selectors persevered with him and this bore results when he took a team thin on bowling resources to India and drew the Test series with a rousing performance in the final Test, Inzamam's 100th. After scoring a magnificent 184, Inzamam led the team astutely on a tense final day and took Pakistan to victory. Since that day, Inzamam has gone from strength to strength as captain and premier batsman. By scoring a hundred against West Indies in June 2005, he kept up a remarkable record of matchwinning centuries, amongt the best of modern-day batsmen. A magnificent year ended with Inzamam leading his team to triumph over Ashes-winning England; personally the series was arguably his best ever. He never failed to make a fifty, scored twin centuries at Faisalabad for the first time, going past Miandad as Pakistan's leading century-maker and joining him as only the second Pakistani with 8000 Test runs. As captain, he never looked more a leader, uniting a young, inexperienced team and turning them, once again, into a force to matter globally. The turn of the year brought contemplation; he missed the Test victory over India at Karachi with a persistent back injury.
The subsequent ODI thrashing also raised concerns about Inzamam as ODI captain, none of which were entirely wiped away during ODI and Test wins in Sri Lanka. Pakistan were then beaten comprehensively in the Test series in England though all was forgotten - including Inzamam's own poor form - by events at The Oval. There, Inzamam, astonishingly for a man perceived as so insouciant, became the most controversial figure in cricket for a week, leading his side off the field in protest at charges of ball tampering made by umpires Billy Doctrove and Darrell Hair. They refused to come out at first, then delayed the start before eventually forfeiting the Test, the first time in the history of the game. In Pakistan, he became a national hero, saviour of a country's pride and honour. He was banned for four ODIs and returned to lead the side to a series-win over West Indies followed by a disappointing Test series in South Africa, and then quit the one-day game after Pakistan were eliminated from the World Cup at the first hurdle, an event overshadowed by the death of Bob Woolmer. Even though he expressed his desire to be part of the Test team, Inzamam was not offered a central contract in July and, according to a few, might signal the end of his illustrious international career.
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Kamran Akmal

Source(google.com.pk)
Kamran Akmal Biography

Kamran Akmal might fighting fit be the majority vigorous testimony of cricket’s distorted main concerned position Adam Gilchrist. A side at the present rummage around for a volatile batsman who can revolutionize a day, an innings, and a stage by means of the bat and so elongated while you can recognize right wicket keeping glove from left, the position is yours.
There has been diminutive distrust concerning Akmal’s batting. The cleanliness of his constrains and the potency of his wounding and dragging, for the most part on slower subcontinent exteriors, has all the time apprehended a strong magnetism. And when it comes mutually as it did one January morning in Karachi in opposition to India – one of the Test innings of that decade – he makes it in the side as a batsman unaccompanied.
Other than his glove work, which started quit auspiciously at what time he successfully finished the battle between Rashid Latif and Moin Khan in belatedly 2004, has got worse frighteningly and a small number of Pakistan matches are complete exclusive of a lumbering Akmal mistake.
It was not for all time hence, for that he was excellent at what time he started, quit presentable to make an impression Ian Healy. On the other hand uncontrollably cricket in all three systems have consent to methodological blunders move stealthily in and critics and specialists have extended pushed for the need for him to take a break.
To excellence spin, he is frequently as gone astray as the batsmen and Danish Kaneria, in excess of the years, has went through in meticulous. In a filament of fault-ridden performances, the one no one will stop thinking about will be the four dropped catches (and a failed to spot run-out) in the Sydney Test of 2009-10, which permitted Australia to run away with an extraordinary, shocking win. In opposition to this the memory of his Karachi hundred will for all time encounters, devoid of obvious winner ever to be expected to come into sight. The assignation with disagreement does his grounds no high-quality, with his negative response to agree with his relegation from the side in the consequences of a catastrophic Sydney Test in 2009, drawing out an inconsiderate fine and a punitive try-out from the PCB.
Kamran Akmal
Kamran Akmal
Kamran Akmal
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