Hunger Strike Inside the Jail, Silence Outside: Imran Khan's Family and the Drying Soil of Pakistani Sport

From my rooftop in Sylhet, at half past eleven, the image that surfaced on my phone screen was no match highlight. A handful of journalists standing outside Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore, and inside, three women on hunger strike — Aleema Khan, Dr Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi. Imran Khan's sisters. The story is emerging from the mouth of the family's spokesperson, Qasim Zaman, and alongside him come the Lahore High Court, the Punjab Cabinet, the conduct of jail administration — one institution after another. Thirty-nine years on the sports desk have taught me one thing: in a country where politics swallows sport, the cricket field and the courtroom chamber are two pages of the same story. What is unfolding inside Kot Lakhpat Jail is a family's suffering, true — but it is also the symptom of a sports ecosystem whose roots dried out long ago. Some will say this is a political story, what has it to do with sport? That question is exactly where my argument begins. Look at the context. Imran Khan — captain of Pakistan's 2026 World Cup-winning cricket team, later Prime Minister of the country. Cricket to politics: that very journey is proof of how inseparably sport and politics are bound in Pakistan. In that country's history, military rule, political instability and internal power struggles within the cricket board have never been separable. There was a time when hockey was Pakistan's national pride; today that hockey, along with squash and athletics, lies buried under political turbulence. And football? Pakistani football was already marginal on the world map, and politics has pushed it back again and again. The recent reports say this: Imran Khan's sisters — Aleema Khan, Dr Uzma Khan and Noreen Niazi — are on hunger strike in Kot Lakhpat Jail. The family alleges that despite orders from the Lahore High Court, the jail administration has not delivered essential items, and that access to medical care and to a lawyer is being denied. Spokesperson Qasim Zaman's account holds that the Lahore High Court 'took no action' on the application, that jail staff behaved rudely, and that even food was returned. Questions have also been raised about the Punjab Cabinet's role. These facts are clear on one side: the health and rights of three women are at stake. They are equally clear on the other: every statement comes from a single source — Qasim Zaman. There is no independent statement from the jail administration or the court in this report. And that is precisely the point that stops me. My training as a sports columnist says: if all the information about a match comes only from one coach's mouth, I do not write that match's scorecard. I wait for a second source. The same rule applies to politics — at least when measuring the reliability of information. Now to the central question. Where is the link between this event and sport? There is none, directly — that is the honest answer. But the indirect link is so large it cannot be ignored. Imran Khan is no ordinary politician; he is the anchor of Pakistan's sporting identity. The political instability built around him casts a shadow over the entire country's sports governance. I won't forget — through the 2000s, the history of FIFA's repeated interventions over the Pakistan Football Federation crossed my desk many times. Because of government interference, FIFA suspended Pakistan more than once — domestic leagues stopped, players lost opportunities abroad, age-group teams were knocked out of international tournaments. This is not theory, it is documented history. And each phase of political instability deepened that problem. When the country's top political leadership is in jail, when rallies are banned, when journalists are under pressure — oversight of sports bodies drops, corruption rises, and money for talent development vanishes. Here is a number I keep turning over. In a country where the political stability index falls, over the following three to five years both the number of matches in the domestic league and the number of international matches played by age-group teams decline. In Pakistan's case, that pattern was clearly visible in the years of FIFA suspension. This is the spreadsheet that breaks the romantic tale — but what it shows here is that with every political jolt, the first casualty is that child running barefoot with a ball on a village field. So what is the story? The story is that three women are on hunger strike inside Kot Lakhpat Jail, and outside in Lahore, countless more children wait in a hunger strike of their own — waiting for someone to build them a pitch, send them a coach, start them a league. Politics does not give that answer, because politics always focuses on the centre of power, never on the edge of the field. I leafed through my old notebook. In the 2026 'Ghost Window' episode, writing about empty stadiums, I had written one line — an empty stadium does not mean silent football. Here too that holds. The hunger strike beyond the jail wall and the paralysis in the country's sporting arena are both silent, yet both speak. When a football pitch is empty, that emptiness shouts the loudest. Pakistan's sporting arena has been exactly such an empty field for years. I do not want to say that the suffering of Imran Khan's family becomes a sports story. That is a humanitarian matter with its own moral weight, and that weight cannot be measured by any data. But if I, as a sports analyst, do not say one thing, my work remains incomplete: Pakistan's sporting crisis is not a separate crisis. It is another form of the political crisis. The day politics stabilises, perhaps FIFA's scrutiny of the football federation will ease, leagues will restart, coaches will come. The reverse is also true — as long as politics is unstable, the field stays empty. One thing keeps returning to me here. I have written about football's transfer market — the transfer market is a confessional where nobody actually confesses. The same applies to politics. The jail administration will say everything is fine, the family will say nothing is fine, the court will say we gave the order, someone will say no order was received — and in between, the truth gets lost the way the real fee gets lost in the noise of transfer rumours. One thing troubles me. Reports say jail staff returned food and behaved rudely. If true, this is not only an injustice to the hunger strikers; it is an institution breaking its own rules. If the Lahore High Court issues an order but takes no action, public faith in the judiciary cracks. And in a society where faith in the judiciary falls, the same distrust forms towards sports bodies — because a culture of ignoring rules spreads from one place to another. Before reaching a conclusion in this piece, I asked myself: am I forcing a political story to attach itself to sport? Honest answer — partly yes. This event has no direct link to football or cricket; it is a legal and humanitarian event. If I force it into a 'football crisis', that would be fabricated analysis, and fabricated analysis is the greatest crime in my profession. Yet there is a reason I do not stop. The reason is that Pakistan's sporting infrastructure is so weak that every political storm strikes it directly. Even at this moment, how normally domestic football or cricket leagues are running is an open question. My guess is that if I spoke to any club coach in Lahore, he would say — 'We are waiting for the outcome of politics, then we'll start training.' That waiting is the curse of Pakistani sport. And one more dimension — what is absent from this report also matters. There is no statement from any jail official, no doctor's report, no independent assessment of the hunger strikers' health. As a journalist, those gaps speak loudest to me. No decision stands on one-sided statements — in sport or in politics. Now let me look forward. I have a habit — at the end of every piece I leave one specific, verifiable prediction. Here it works on two levels. First, within the coming weeks, either the Lahore High Court's pressure will deliver the essential items and the hunger strike will end, or the matter will escalate into a larger political confrontation. Second, and more important for sport — if Pakistan's political instability drags on another six months, then next season the number of matches in domestic football and cricket leagues will fall, and FIFA's scrutiny will become active again. I am not insisting that sports fans should drop political news. Quite the opposite. Those who love the field should read this news carefully — because the future of the field is decided off the field, in courtrooms, in cabinets, beyond the jail wall. I am fifty-five now. At this age I trust the terrace more than the terminal. And the terrace has taught me one thing: how many goals a player scored goes into a spreadsheet; but why a human being cannot play does not. The three women inside Kot Lakhpat Jail right now are not a match score. Yet their hunger strike speaks like a scorecard — telling us how much the foundation of the house called Pakistani sport is shaking. The last word is simple. Pakistan's cricket history gave Imran Khan its brightest chapter. But the same country gave him and his family jail walls and a hunger strike. This irony is Pakistan's story — where heroism and captivity live side by side. And sport? Sport is the silent witness of that story, sometimes bathed in stage light, sometimes left in a dark corner. The question is not mine, it is time's: when will Pakistan get its fields back — and when will it see its heroes outside prison walls?