The Pakistan Cricket Board threatened to keep its players off the field at Lord’s if Sky Sports broadcast an interview with Imran Khan’s sons during the second Test. Sky aired it anyway. Pakistan played anyway. The threat collapsed within hours, but what it revealed about the PCB’s relationship with its own players will outlast this Test match.
On the opening day of the second Test between England and Pakistan at Lord’s, August 27, the PCB contacted Sky Sports before the lunch break. The message: do not air the interview with Sulaiman and Kasim Khan, or Pakistan’s players might refuse to return for the afternoon session. Sky initially delayed the broadcast. Then aired the full 18-minute segment during lunch. Pakistan’s domestic broadcaster PTV did not show the interview to viewers at home.
The PCB lodged a formal complaint with Sky Sports. The ECB was informed. No public statement came from PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi or any board official. Pakistan’s players walked back out at 2:40 PM local time. The boycott never happened.
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The interview was conducted by Michael Atherton, former England captain and Sky Sports broadcaster, in the Lord’s Writers’ Room on August 27. Sulaiman and Kasim Khan, sons of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, spoke about their father’s deteriorating health inside Adiala jail.
Kasim Khan described what he saw the last time he was able to see his father.
“Right now, it’s crucial for us that he gets proper treatment. When we saw him, he had an eye patch on from the eye situation; he seemed visibly stressed and that is very hard to imagine. Because he embodies a very calm and assured kind of presence. So to hear him stressed, anxious or disturbed is very difficult.”
Kasim Khan, Sky Sports interview at Lord’s, August 27, 2026
The brothers last met their father in November 2022. They last spoke to him in March 2026. They have been denied visas to visit Pakistan.
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Atherton’s interview was not an isolated act. Four days before the Test, 21 former international cricket captains sent a letter to Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif demanding proper medical attention for Imran Khan. The signatories included Atherton, Sunil Gavaskar, Kapil Dev, Allan Border, Ian Chappell, Greg Chappell, Steve Waugh, Adam Gilchrist, Clive Lloyd, Nasser Hussain, Alastair Cook, Andrew Strauss, David Gower, Kim Hughes, Michael Brearley, Belinda Clark, Alex Blackwell, Lee Germon, Arjuna Ranatunga, Dilip Vengsarkar, and John Wright.
No current or former Pakistan cricketer signed either this letter or the earlier one from February 2026, which carried 14 signatures. The absence says everything about the pressure Pakistani cricketers operate under.
The letter stated they were writing “not as politicians, but as former colleagues.” A previous appeal in February had gone unanswered.
The timing mattered. On August 18, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ordered Imran Khan’s transfer from Adiala jail to Shifa International Hospital for independent medical assessment. Instead, authorities moved him to PIMS, a government-run hospital, conducted a brief check-up, and returned him to prison. Khan’s party, PTI, filed a contempt petition arguing the government had defied the court order.
Pakistan’s government rejected allegations of mistreatment, stating Khan had received “more than 900 visits from family members, legal representatives and medical professionals” since his imprisonment in August 2023. Officials said medical assessments found no condition requiring urgent treatment.
This was the political backdrop when Atherton sat down with Khan’s sons at Lord’s. The PCB’s complaint to Sky Sports was not about cricket. It was about a broadcaster airing content critical of the Pakistan government during an official Test match broadcast.
Insider Read
Think about what those Pakistan players were told before lunch on Day 1 at Lord’s. Not that there was a change in the batting order. Not that the pitch had done something unexpected. They were told they might not be going back out after lunch. At Lord’s. In a Test match. Because of a television interview about their former prime minister.
No player had a say in this. No player was consulted. The PCB made a political calculation and the playing XI were the leverage. That is what it means to play for Pakistan under this board. Your career, your place, your livelihood, all of it depends on a chairman who also serves as the country’s Interior Minister. When Mohsin Naqvi decides the team should sit in the dressing room as a political statement, the players cannot push back. They do not have that power.
Pakistan Bowled Anyway
Whatever was said in that dressing room before the afternoon session, Pakistan’s bowlers walked out and delivered one of their best performances of the tour. Mohammad Abbas took 4/56. Mohammad Ali claimed 3 wickets. On a seam-friendly Lord’s surface, Pakistan’s attack made England work for every run.
That performance happened while the PCB was filing complaints and the cricketing world was debating whether Pakistan would actually walk off. The players answered the only way they could. They bowled.
The PCB’s boycott threat failed because Sky Sports chose editorial independence over diplomatic pressure. It failed because Pakistan’s players had no interest in becoming political pawns at Lord’s. And it failed because a cricket board that also functions as an arm of the state discovered that its leverage has limits outside Pakistan’s borders.
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