Michael Holding Speaks Out on Imran Khan's Inhumane Treatment

Michael Holding’s voice tightens when he reaches Imran Khan’s name. The cricket great has seen plenty in his 72 years around the game, but what is happening to his former opponent in a Pakistani prison, he says, goes beyond politics and cuts straight into basic humanity.

Imran has been behind bars since 2023, mired in a web of legal cases. His family say he is being denied even the simplest of facilities – no books, limited access to medical care. The picture that emerges is not of a former World Cup-winning captain or ex-Prime Minister, but of a man stripped of dignity.

The issue flared again during the recent Lord’s Test between England and Pakistan. Michael Atherton’s interview with Imran’s sons, Sulaiman and Kasim, recorded on the sidelines of the match, triggered a storm. The PCB, angered by the subject matter, threatened to pull out of the fixture. Sky Sports did not back down. The broadcaster aired the full 18-minute segment, in which the brothers spoke calmly but starkly about what they described as unfair treatment and inadequate medical attention for their father.

For Holding, who faced Imran in international cricket and county games and later walked London’s streets with him to raise funds for the Shaukat Khanum cancer hospital, the situation feels personal.

“I played with Imran, I wouldn't say I played a lot,” he told Sports Now. “I played some one-day games with him. I played county cricket, a few games against Imran, but apart from playing with Imran, I have spent time with Imran.”

Those memories go beyond dressing rooms and boundary ropes. Holding remembers a driven man, moving from meeting to meeting, event to event, trying to turn a vision for a cancer hospital into reality.

“When Imran was going around London looking to garner funds for that cancer hospital, I went around with him, I tried to support him as best as I possibly could, where that was concerned. So I know the man, and I know exactly what type of person that he is. And it's extremely sad to see the situation now and what is going on with Imran Khan.”

The contrast is jarring: a global icon of Pakistani cricket and politics, now described by his family as being denied basic medical care. Holding doesn’t hide his anger. He calls the treatment “unacceptable” and aligns himself fully with the group of former Pakistan captains who recently wrote a letter urging humane conditions for Imran.

“I am in total support of the captains who wrote that letter. I don't know what effect it will have, but I am in total support of trying to get the man to be treated just like another human being. You don't treat human beings that way. People who have committed murder aren't treated that way. So I don't see the reason why this man should be treated that way.”

Then comes the question that hangs over the entire saga: why?

“I don't know if there's jealousy involved in this, because Imran Khan. I don't think there's a Pakistani that is more well known around the world than Imran Khan. That is ridiculous, the way the man is being treated,” Holding said.

Imran’s legacy in Pakistan is complicated, politically charged, and fiercely debated. His legacy in cricket is not. To many, he remains the face of Pakistan’s 1992 World Cup triumph, the captain who reshaped the country’s fast-bowling culture, the man who turned personal tragedy into a nationwide health project.

That is what makes the current image so stark: one of the country’s most recognisable figures, reduced to a case file, his sons speaking on television about a lack of books and doctors, former opponents pleading simply for him to be treated “like another human being.”

For Holding, who once watched Imran marshal fields and bend games to his will, the question is no longer about politics or power. It is about whether Pakistan is willing to extend its most famous son the basic decency it would afford any prisoner, let alone one who once carried its flag on the world stage.