You can’t lead a revolution and hide behind bullet-proof glass — at least not according to Imran Khan, wildcard contender for power at the ballot box in Pakistan next week.

Visibly tired by 15-hour days, frenetic flying and driving round the country to address tens of thousands in a campaign dominated by threats and fear of attack, the cricket legend is nothing if not focused.

‘This is a revolution taking place,’ he told AFP after a couple of days of hard campaigning in Punjab, his home province and the political backbone of Pakistan which elects a little over half the seats in the national assembly.

‘When I came to politics 17 years ago, I had already conquered my fear of dying because I knew I was going to challenge the status quo,’ the 60-year-old said. But security is clearly a major preoccupation.

Khan says he’s on the ‘top five hit list’. He may not use the bulletproof glass screens used by other politicians at public rallies, but he travels in an armoured car with an armed police escort.

A rally in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, was cancelled on Sunday after attacks on rival parties killed more than 20 people. Attacks targeting the election campaign have so far killed nearly 60 people ahead of the May 11 polls.‘We couldn’t take a risk. It’s just too dangerous. I mean you can’t risk the life of other people,’ the 60-year-old said.

Khan has two sons by his ex-wife Jemima Khan, daughter of the late billionaire tycoon James Goldsmith, but they live in Britain and he has not seen them for several months.‘My older son worries. You know he worries, obviously, because when he hears what’s going on in Pakistan,’ he says.

Khan and Nawaz Sharif, the two-time prime minister whose PML-N party is tipped to win, are the only two leaders addressing big rallies.The three main parties in the outgoing government, the PPP, the MQM and the ANP, have curtailed public gatherings in the face of direct Taleban threats.

Khan’s campaign is about mobilising the masses, exploiting disaffection with a corrupt elite, tapping into anti-American sentiment that blames many of the countries woes on the United States and promising to fix a crippling power crisis.‘If my politics is different... I can’t be standing behind a bullet-proof screen and connecting with the people,’ he said.

When he bounded up to the microphone in Sarghoda, a university and garrison town in the Punjab farm belt, he deliberately stepped in front, not behind the protective screen party workers had hauled onto the podium.To his supporters he is the hero who led Pakistan’s cricket team to World Cup victory in 1992 and then set up the best cancer hospital in the country.