Imran Khan was casually dressed when he stepped off a bus in Pakistan's biggest city of Lahore to kisses and hugs from so many fans he could barely breathe.
It was 1992 and he had just led the country's cricket team to its first, and only, World Cup win in Australia.
The streets were full of fans, hordes of young women screamed his name, bands played traditional music, and police were beating away people just so the cricketing legend could get through.
"Amazing, the World Cup fever," he said humbly to a journalist.
His success on the pitch had undoubtedly made him the King of Pakistan, an unrivalled hero in a cricket-obsessed nation. Some even called him a god.
Exactly 30 years on, however, the shine has worn off.
Mr Khan ascended to the country's highest office in 2018.
While no leader has ever completed a full five-year parliamentary tenure in Pakistan, it is believed a falling out with the military resulted in Mr Khan being sensationally ousted in April.
With the cricket champion turned politician unable to rely on his sportsmanship and fame anymore, he is engineering chaos to get back into power.
But will it work? The ABC has spoken to some of Mr Khan's closest allies, Pakistani experts, and staunch opponents who are all split on whether he can succeed in becoming prime minister again.
It's another cautionary tale about a celebrity who became a political leader.
The rise of a 'humble sinner'
Imran Khan was always destined to be part of Pakistan's biggest sport. He was born into a great cricketing family, stood out in his local team in Lahore, and played at a Grammar School in England where he completed high school.
He went on to Oxford, where he captained the university's team while studying politics and philosophy.
"I was in college when he became famous, but I never thought of him as a leader of a political party or something like that," says Nusrat Wahid, who went on to join Mr Khan's party and was elected to Pakistan's National Assembly.
"He was a young boy who was very smart and all the girls from universities were after him, but I never thought about him in this way.
"I took him as a very good cricketer, but I was not interested in cricket at the time."
After heading back to Pakistan in 1976, Mr Khan got a permanent position in the national cricket team, which was the start of an ongoing relationship with Australia.
He faced the team and was signed up for Kerry Packer's commercial competition, World Series Cricket. And it was in Perth that he got the title of one of the fastest bowlers in the world during a contest.
His success on the pitch had made him a household name, but it was his life outside of cricket that earned him global attention.
"Sex, or at least the idea of it, is never far from Imran Khan," an article in Indian magazine Caravan said.
At the height of the cricketer's stardom, his face was everywhere, and tabloids were constantly covering his numerous relationships with women like Goldie Hawn, Liza Campbell, or "mysterious blondes".
He said he never drank alcohol as part of his commitment to his Islamic faith, but he still gained a reputation as a playboy on the London nightclub scene.
Mr Khan was open about being a bachelor during his cricket days and this popularity helped glamorise cricket.
While playing Kerry Packer's tournament, he wore a T-shirt that said: "Big Boys Play At Night."
Three years after his World Cup win, Mr Khan married British heiress Jemima Goldsmith, who was the daughter of one of the world's richest men at the time, Sir James Goldsmith. It was the first of Mr Khan's three marriages.
"I have never claimed to be an angel," he told The Guardian in 2006.
"I am a humble sinner. In my cricket career I would keep a log and write down the areas I had failed in so I could make them strengths. I have tried to do that in life, too."
Mr Khan's charisma and appeal helped him gain popularity and would later distinguish the former cricketer from other career politicians in Pakistan. At the very least, he wasn't bald, fans said.
By 1996, Mr Khan had moved on from scoring runs to winning over the hearts and minds of Pakistan's voters. He founded his political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), but it took him years to turn his fame into political success.
From cricket hero to political charmer
After his retirement, Mr Khan admitted he tampered with the ball in his early cricket days.
"Everyone has been tampering with the ball. I too tampered with the ball in the sense of lifting the seam and scratching the surface of the ball. But I never considered it cheating because that was accepted as part of cricket," he said in a 1994 interview.
It caused a cricket scandal but Mr Khan blamed the Western press for creating a "Paki-bashing exercise".
This incident had the hallmarks of what Mr Khan's opponents say was to come in his political career: deception, defensiveness, and accusations directed at the West.
"His past track record as a cricketer played an important role but then he struggled for over 16 years to become a popular leader," says Hasan Askari Rizvi, a Pakistani political scientist at Punjab University.
"From the end of 2011, he began to muster support."
Mr Khan sold himself and the PTI as a party of "change", saying he was distinct from the elite political class and promising to eliminate corruption.
"We will stand with you, not because I am shouting political slogans, but because it is my duty to stand with the weaker class," he told a rally of 100,000 people in Lahore in 2011.
Abdul Samad Yakoob was a founding member of the PTI and remembers when the former cricketer was the "biggest celebrity of Pakistan".
"I was quite young, so he was quite impressive the moment he launched the party and he was against dynastic politics and this corrupt system," he says.
Mr Khan had drawn support from young Pakistanis, who make up the majority of the country, through policies to improve education and health.
The PTI gained electoral power and by 2018, the party's members were able to win huge swings against their dynastic rivals, propelling Mr Khan to the office of prime minister.
"However, his governance from 2018 did not create the impression that he is a good administrator," Professor Rizvi said.
"The governance was poor, political management was also not properly managed, and he did not show the kind of political accommodation that is needed in Pakistan to govern.
"Because in Pakistan, governance not only means you manage the political forces, but you also deal with powerful state institutions like the army."
When he first became prime minister, Mr Khan's opponents accused him of having a cosy relationship with Pakistan's powerful military. Some even accused the military of rigging the election in his favour, which the electoral commission denied.
Once in power, Mr Khan did follow through on some of his promises. He introduced the social welfare system, a universal healthcare system in two provinces, and saw progress on a program to deal with poverty.
Pakistan also appears to have the best COVID-19 record in South Asia.
But Islamic militancy rose in Pakistan during Mr Khan's reign and he was widely criticised for calling Osama Bin Laden a martyr in 2020.
The tension with neighbouring rival India has not improved either.
And last year, human rights groups accused Mr Khan of being an apologist for rapists following comments he made on an increase in sexual assaults.
"If a woman is wearing very few clothes it will have an impact on the man unless they are robots. It's common sense," he told HBO's Axios.
But ultimately things started to unravel for Mr Khan once he lost the support of the powerful army, according to analysts.
The five-year curse of Pakistan's PMs
By the end of 2021, Mr Khan no longer had the military's backing "for a number of reasons", according to Professor Rizvi.
"… He lost their support and many of his coalition partners with him also slipped away, thinking that he may not be in power," he said.
"I think despite his hero image, Imran Khan has serious problems … he was making statements that alienated a lot of people."
The situation came to a head during Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which Mr Khan has refused to condemn despite Pakistan's military general saying it "must be stopped immediately".
On the day Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops crossed the border, Mr Khan was in Moscow and infamously said: "What a time I have come, so much excitement."
The tension between the prime minister and the military might have given Mr Khan's opponents an opportunity to pounce, according to Omar Qureshi, former media adviser to one of the leaders of Mr Khan's rival parties, Billawal Bhutto.
"It's come up that he wasn't on the same page with the most important centre of power in the country, the military, so that gave a signal to the opposition," he says.
As the cost of living in Pakistan rose, the country's opposition parties — made up of the dynastic families Mr Khan once toppled — said he had failed to revive the economy and united to form a no-confidence motion against him.
"… He was being propped up by members of parliament from other parties, and they switched sides and that's what made the difference," Mr Qureshi says.
Despite several attempts to block it, including by dissolving parliament, Mr Khan was ousted as prime minister in April and replaced by Shehbaz Sharif, a member of Pakistan's political dynasty.
Mr Khan has claimed the US was behind the push to oust him, pointing to his anti-Western policies and his criticism of the American war in Afghanistan. However, it is something the US has repeatedly denied.
While he may have lost the support of the country's military generals, the former leader still has thousands of loyal supporters.
Many have held protest marches demanding fresh elections in June, claiming Mr Khan has been unfairly kicked out. Authorities have used tear gas and batons against people participating in his marches.
"We will see if they allow us to go towards elections through legal and constitutional means, otherwise this country will go towards civil war," Mr Khan was quoted in a Pakistan paper on June 2.
There are fears Mr Khan's inflammatory language may only further polarise the nation, pushing the country into greater political turmoil.
Former minister Fawad Chaudhry warned in May that the country was "inches away from full-fledge[d] civil unrest".
Pakistan is facing a political crisis, according to Mr Rizvi.
"Imran Khan appears determined to resort to this strategy and that is causing concern with the government," Mr Rizvi said.
But Mr Qureshi doubts Mr Khan will be able to form the next government.
Even so, Mr Khan's supporters, like Abdul Samad Yakoob, say it is their "fundamental right" to keep fighting.
"We are not going to directly topple the government, we are simply demanding a fresh election," he said.
"If the opposition parties are so confident, why are they refusing to go public? So yes, Imran Khan is going to get back into power very soon."
