upper-middle-class residential area [with] many large trees, old houses and a village feel to it’. In later years it earned the somewhat unkind nickname ‘Jurassic Park’ because of its inhabitants’ physical size and alleged mental shortcomings. The uniting family theme, once again, appears to have been a healthy lack of respect for any form of central authority, coupled with a broad streak of individualism or, on occasion, eccentricity. As a boy, Imran had fond memories of his uncle Ahmad Raza Khan, who was known to enliven proceedings at Zaman Park by rolling around on the floor with his pet leopard — something of a Khan tradition. According to a source who asked for anonymity, there had been one ‘heart-stopping’ moment when the animal broke free and ran out on to the street, pursued by Ahmad Raza, where it eventually ‘leapt through the window of a small house [and] chased an old lady off the lavatory’. Shortly after this incident, Mr Khan made a gift of the leopard to the Lahore zoo.
Intelligent, well-off, reverent, but no more so than many diligent Muslim families, Ikramullah, Shaukat and the five Khan children never took their life of comparative privilege for granted. According to a cousin, it was a ‘paternalistic, unostentatious, self-effacing’ household. Ikramullah, a London-trained civil engineer, was in the habit of quoting the Koran’s teaching that ‘no one [was] above or below anyone else’, a principle he applied daily in his own life. To a junior colleague named Waris Sharif, ‘He was the most gracious man, and always paid you the compliment of listening closely.’ There were times when the family dinner table also included the domestic servants, hired hands, or even occasional passers-by seeking a handout, vivid instances of the tolerance and egalitarianism that stand out in the memories of friends and neighbours. The Khan children were positively encouraged to excel, if only because it was in their own interests to do so; there would be ‘no subsequent trust funds [or] large inheritances’. In later years, Imran was at pains to stress that he couldn’t possibly be a playboy, since ‘playboys have plenty of time and money. I have never had either.’
For all that, he enjoyed a materially comfortable, urban — and, increasingly, urbane — childhood. No. 22 Zaman Park was a spacious, six-bedroomed brick home of 1950s-stockbroker decor. According to one visitor, there was a ‘teak cabinet the size of a coffin, woven farashi rugs and doilied armchairs’. A water buffalo grazed in the back garden. The family also farmed several hundred acres of sugar cane outside Lahore. Every summer they escaped the heat by decamping either to Ghora Ghali, near Islamabad, or to a resort called Murree in the foothills of the Himalayas, where Imran acquired a love of the ‘bright, crystal-clear climate’ and exotic wildlife.
More important than material considerations, Imran grew up with a sense of inner authority that came from being the apple of his parents’ eye: the lovingly indulged only son. He clearly inherited qualities from both sides of the clan, the spiritual instinct and sporting prowess of the Burkis, and the dour application of the Niazis. The boy Imran displayed a masterful self-confidence from an early age.
For the Khans, the summers also meant camping and shooting (game only) and ample scope for kite-flying, both solo and competitive. The last hobby seems to have become an increasing fetish, and I was told that as a six- or seven-year-old Imran had regularly run for more than 3 kilometres (2 miles) from one end of Zaman Park to the other, a contraption ‘painted like the Pakistani national flag’ fluttering above him. To add to the already punishing training regimen, he sometimes carried a pillowcase filled with rocks on his back. In later years when people asked Imran about his remarkable stamina, he always mentioned the kites: ‘I would sprint, not just jog along,’ he invariably pointed out. ‘It would often be like an obstacle course — over walls, hedges, fields, roads and ploughed land … My legs and knees got tougher and tougher.’ On a more sedentary note, Imran enjoyed his food, particularly the heavily spiced curries (the typical Pakistani is not a vegetarian), and most forms of local music. He was known to attend extended performances of Qawwalis, the mystic songs traditionally played on a stringed instrument called the sarangi that can take up to half-an-hour to retune between numbers, a more leisurely pace than that set even at the Pink Floyd concerts Imran later enjoyed. As well as Lahore’s spring festival he always looked forward to the Eid ul-Fiter, or Small Eid (as opposed to the more ascetic Eid ul-Azha, or Big Eid), a major religious celebration that marks the end of Ramadan, when families come together to share a meal broadly in the spirit of the American Thanksgiving. Lahore’s Aitchison College, which he attended between the ages of seven and 16, was a sprawling, tree-lined campus whose curriculum perhaps over-emphasised Britain’s former colonial glories. But compared to most local schools it was a bastion of learning, where Imran was once sent across the playing field into the 10-year-olds’ classroom to recite what one of them describes admiringly as ‘some long verse or some long poem’, which he did in an ‘already deep, mellifluous voice’. Other contemporary accounts recall Imran’s ‘inner poise’ or ‘seriousness’. A faded group photograph of the time shows a slightly chubby youngster with his dark hair combed neatly for the occasion, and a not entirely friendly expression on his face. Imran’s older sister Robina considered the international sex symbol of later years an ‘ugly little brute’ as a boy.
What about cricket? Virtually from the moment Pakistan came into being, Imran’s maternal family was busy turning out a galaxy of players who adorned the national sport. (The Niazis, by contrast, reportedly thought the whole thing ‘boring’ and ‘uncompetitive … Hardly anyone [was] ever physically struck.’) Imran’s first cousin Javed Burki was already playing professional cricket in 1955, aged 17, and went on to make 25 Test appearances throughout the 1960s. Another cousin, Majid Khan, didn’t wait even that long; he made his first-class debut just a few days after his 15th birthday. Majid’s father was Jahangir Khan, the Indian Test all-rounder who once managed to kill a sparrow when it came into the path of his delivery as he was bowling against the MCC at Lord’s; the unfortunate bird is still on display in the ground’s museum. In a tradition that was to be significant to Imran, all three of these men went to England to complete their education at either Oxford or Cambridge University. No fewer than six other Khan cousins played at least some form of competitive cricket for a variety of Pakistan clubs (one of whom, Asad Khan, appeared in a single match for Peshawar against Sargodha in November 1961 in which he didn’t bowl, took no catches and was out for 1 — surely one of the shorter careers in professional sport). Literally dozens more, ranging in age from preschool to the long-ago retired, performed on a less formal basis for teams on either side of the national border. Before partition, the Jullandari Pathans had sometimes turned out 22 men to play each other in family ‘blood matches’. Imran’s uncle Ahmad Raza Khan, of pet leopard fame, himself a useful bat, served on regional Punjab committees and later became a national selector. In March 1965, he took his 12-year-old nephew with him to Rawalpindi to see the Pakistani Test side, for which both Javed and Majid were lucky enough to have been chosen. Pakistan beat New Zealand by an innings. On the last day’s play Ahmad Raza took Imran into the pavilion and told all his friends there that one day he would be ‘our greatest living cricketer’.
Even then, everyone in Pakistan seemed to either play or watch the sport that was one of the few truly unifying national activities. Lahore’s Iqbal Gardens, like many other municipal parks, would regularly host ten club matches at a time. Play typically started after breakfast, broke for a lengthy lunch, and continued right through the insistent call for maghrib prayers, signalling sunset. As Javed Miandad would recall, ‘The light was often so bad [the spectators] couldn’t follow the game, but still you kept making your shots.’ There was a particularly vibrant cricket scene in Lahore, where club and even school matches, particularly those where any sort of feud existed, regularly attracted upwards of 5,000 spectators, and became a nursery for the national side. Nine out of the 11 names selected to represent Pakistan in the country’s first ever Test played most or all of their cricket in Lahore. According to the fast bowler Mahmood Hussain, the long-running rivalry between the city’s Government College and Islamia College ‘was a good preparation for the competitive pressures of Test cricket. I always bowled better when the crowd was against me, as so often happened.’ Rising right up in the historical centre of town, the Lahore (later ‘Gaddafi’) Stadium, modelled on the Mogul school of ornate brickwork and arches — reminding some of a clumsily iced cake
