Irfan Pathan
Pathan was born 27 October 1984 in Baroda, Gujarat, India and is of Pashtun (Pathan) ancestry, belonging to the Pathan community in Gujarat. He grew up with his elder brother Yusuf in a mosque in Vadodara, in an impoverished family. His father served as the muezzin. Although their parents wished them to become Islamic scholars, Pathan and his brother took an interest in cricket. Their games on the grounds off and inside the mosque often necessitated apologies from their father to Muslim worshippers who visited it. In the beginning his deliveries did not reach the other end of the cricket pitch, but rigorous six-hour training sessions in blazing heat and his family's sense of discipline saw him progress steadily.
Imran Khan (Bollywood actor)
Khan's parents divorced when he was still a toddler, after which his mother moved to Mumbai. In an interview, Khan called his step-father, Raj Zutshi, as the father figure during his growing years. He was enrolled at Bombay Scottish School, where he developed a stammer due to corporal punishments such as caning. According to Khan, his grades fell and his academic career went into a "strong decline" due to his inability to cope with his new environment and radically changed family situation; he became nervous and developed facial tics. Meanwhile, his mother married again and found it convenient to send him to a boarding school, choosing Blue Mountain School in distant Coonoor, Tamil Nadu. After a period of depression in Coonoor, Khan adjusted and grew into the environment; he later described his experience there as "phenomenal," although his grades remained poor. When the principal of that school left to start his own school, Khan and several other students followed him to a Gurukul in the jungles of Ooty. The new school had no electricity, the students were required to wash their clothes in a creek and they even grew some of the food they ate. Khan later admitted that frequently changing schools made him independent but also a loner.