I mran Khan’s grand political tragedy stems from a simple, elegant, and deeply flawed premise: he believed that governing an ungovernable nuclear-armed nation of 240 million people was exactly like captaining the 1992 Pakistani cricket team to World Cup victory. For decades, the charismatic sportsman-turned-politician operated under the assumption that the Pakistani constitution was just a slightly longer version of the MCC Rulebook. He assumed that the gruelling, messy landscape of Pakistani politics would naturally respect the sacred boundary ropes of “fair play.”

Unfortunately for him, he walked onto the field in whites, holding a pristine willow bat, only to realize the opposition was playing a completely different sport – one involving spiked brass knuckles, invisible umpires, and a pitch that could literally be stolen overnight. In cricket, the umpire is a respected, unbiased figure standing in a white coat, whose decisions are final. When Imran Khan launched his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), he spent years appealing to the ultimate authority in Pakistani public life: the military establishment, unanimously whispered about in Islamabad as “The Umpire.” Khan spent years waiting for the umpire’s finger to go up, signalling the political death of his rivals. When he finally ascended to the prime minister’s office in 2018, he proudly declared that he and the military were on the “same page.”

In cricket terms, he believed the umpire had joined his team as a strategic all-rounder. The........

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