A Pakistan Sky Sports complaint turned the lunch interval on day one at Lord’s into something closer to a diplomatic incident. The Pakistan Cricket Board lodged a formal protest with the broadcaster after it aired an interview with Kasim and Sulaiman Khan, the sons of Imran Khan, the former Pakistan captain and prime minister who has been in prison for three years.
The board went far enough to consider keeping its players in the dressing room after the break. It did not come to that, and the second Test resumed on time. But the episode showed how little daylight there now is between the PCB’s cricket function and the Pakistani state, and it has left the England and Wales Cricket Board mediating a row it did not start.
What the Pakistan Sky Sports complaint was about
Mike Atherton, the former England captain and Sky’s lead cricket broadcaster, recorded the 18-minute interview in the Writers’ Room at Lord’s on Wednesday morning, with a teaser running in the build-up to the Test, according to ESPNcricinfo. In it, Imran’s sons set out their concerns about their father’s health and said they feared for his life.
Those are the family’s allegations, not established findings. The Guardian reported that the interview included the claim that the authorities are “trying to kill him”, and that Imran has been held in solitary confinement since 2023, with his lawyers describing his conditions as “slow-motion murder” and his sister alleging he has been tortured.
ESPNcricinfo reports that Pakistan’s Supreme Court last week ordered Imran to be admitted to Shifa Hospital in Islamabad, but that he was instead taken to the state-run PIMS and returned to prison shortly after a check-up. His family have said that breached the court order.
The threat not to take the field at Lord’s
The PCB contacted Sky before the lunch break to object, and is understood to have warned that its players would not return to the field if the segment ran. Sky delayed the interview and then broadcast it in full. By the time it finished, Pakistan’s players were preparing to walk out for the second session at 2.40pm.
The Guardian reports that PCB officials briefly threatened to stop the team returning and that the ECB talked them round in tense discussions, with the afternoon and evening sessions going ahead as planned before bad light ended play shortly before 6pm. In Pakistan, the state broadcaster PTV did not carry the interview.
The protest carries an unusual weight because of who sits at the top of the board. The Guardian notes that the PCB chair, Mohsin Naqvi, is also Pakistan’s interior minister, which places its most senior figure inside the government whose treatment of Imran the interview questioned.
Why the Pakistan Sky Sports complaint reaches into day two
Pakistan remain aggrieved. The Guardian reports the matter has also been raised with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, that talks with the touring party continued into the night, and that the ECB has received assurances Pakistan will take the field on day two.
There is a further complication for the board in choosing this fight. Atherton was among 21 former captains who wrote to the Pakistan prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, last week urging that Imran receive proper medical care, ESPNcricinfo reports. The interviewer was already a party to the campaign the PCB wanted kept off air.
None of it moved the cricket. England closed the first day on 248 for 9 after Mohammad Abbas took 4-56, as set out in ReadCricket’s report of Jamie Smith and Jordan Cox digging in at Lord’s. Babar Azam, back as captain after a hand injury, chose to bowl and was rewarded inside half an hour.
England lead the three-match series 1-0 and have the chance to seal it at Lord’s. Play resumes on Friday 28 August with England nine wickets down and Pakistan yet to bat, and with a touring board still waiting on a response from a broadcaster that has already declined to back down.
