WHILE the Indian cricket team was yet to kick off its campaign in the ongoing T20 World Cup in the West Indies and USA, two of the country's former cricketers, both having won the cricket's top trophy in their careers, were elected to the parliament in the recently held general elections.
The two cricketer-turned-politicians are Kirti Azad and Yusuf Pathan and both won the general elections from the eastern state of West Bengal.
Azad, a member of India's 1983 World Cup-winning team under the captaincy of legendary allrounder Kapil Dev, defeated his nearest competitor Dilip Ghosh of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by more than 130,000 votes in the constituency of Bardhaman-Durgapur. He contested the election on the ticket of Trinamool Congress (TMC), the ruling party of Bengal and an opposition to the BJP of prime minister Narendra Modi.
Ghosh is a heavyweight leader of the BJP in the state and is a former MP and national vice president of the Hindu nationalist party.
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It is the third parliamentary stint for Azad, 65, who was earlier elected from Darbhanga constituency of the neighbouring state of Bihar on the ticket of the BJP which he left in 2019. He joined the Congress and left it to join the TMC in 2021.
Pathan, on the other hand, proved to be a giant-killer as he defeated Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, a former leader of the Indian National Congress in the Lok Sabha or popularly elected Lower House of the parliament, by more than 85,000 votes. While Pathan of the TMC was contesting his first election, Chowdhury was looking for his sixth consecutive victory from the seat.
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Pathan, 41, was a member of the two India squads that won the T20 World Cup in 2007 and 50-over World Cup in 2011 under the leadership of Mahendra Singh Dhoni. The former batter-all-rounder has also played for Indian Premier League franchise Kolkata Knight Riders named after the capital city of Bengal.
Army personnel stand amid the rubble following an explosion inside the police headquarters at Kohat in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on September 18, 2026. An explosion at a historic police headquarters in northern Pakistan on September 18 killed at least eight people and wounded 35 more, officials said, with the country's president swiftly blaming a militant group. Getty Images
Mourners read the holy Quran while sitting around the grave of a paramilitary personnel of the Frontier Corps (FC) who was killed during the Afghanistan-Pakistan border clashes, in Kohat on October 17, 2025. A ceasefire along the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan was holding on October 16, officials on both sides said, after dozens of troops and civilians were killed in cross-border clashes.Getty Images
