Michael Holding’s voice tightens when he reaches Imran Khan’s name. The cricketing great has seen fierce fast bowling, hostile crowds, and political turmoil around the game, but what is happening to his former rival off the field has left him shaken.
Imran has been in a Pakistani prison since 2023, entangled in a web of legal cases. His family say he is being denied even the basics: books, proper medical care, simple human comforts. The image jars with the memory of a World Cup-winning captain and one of Pakistan’s most recognisable faces.
The story burst back into the cricketing conversation during the recent Lord’s Test between England and Pakistan. On the sidelines, Michael Atherton interviewed Imran’s sons, Sulaiman and Kasim. Their 18-minute conversation painted a bleak picture of their father’s treatment, accusing the authorities of unfair and inhumane conditions.
The fallout was immediate. The PCB threatened to pull out of the Lord’s fixture if the interview went to air. Sky Sports broadcast it anyway.
For Holding, who shared dressing rooms and battlefields with Imran across formats and continents, the clip cut deep.
“I'll mention one name, Imran Khan, but you probably don't want to go down the political route, and I don't want to either, but that's a sad story,” he told Sports Now, making it clear this was not about party lines or policy debates. This was personal.
He went back to the days when Imran was not a prime minister, not a prisoner, but a cricketer-turned-campaigner, walking the streets of London with a different mission: raising money for a cancer hospital in memory of his mother.
“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,” Holding recalled.
This was not nostalgia. It was testimony. A fast bowler who once ran in hard at Imran from 22 yards now finds himself standing firmly in his corner.
Holding’s distress is shared by other greats of the game. A group of former captains recently signed a letter calling for basic humanity in Imran’s treatment. Brian Lara has already gone public with an emotional plea, demanding that the former Pakistan captain at least be afforded fundamental dignity.
Holding has nailed his colours to that mast.
“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,” he said.
The phrasing is blunt. Deliberately so. This is not a carefully calibrated diplomatic statement. It is outrage from someone who believes a line has been crossed.
Holding then touches on a question that many in Pakistan whisper but rarely voice openly.
“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,” he added.
That global recognition is at the heart of the unease. Imran is not just another former leader in custody. He is a World Cup-winning captain, a cultural figure whose name still resonates in dressing rooms, commentary boxes and living rooms from Kingston to Karachi.
For Holding, that status does not demand special privileges. It demands something more basic: that a man who once united a nation on a cricket field is at least treated as a human being inside a prison cell.
