Imran`s biography details his `love life`

Christopher Sandford has penned Imran`s colourful biography.

London: Though his cricketing career was still in its early stages in the mid-1970s, Imran Khan`s "love life" was a constant and he generally brought a `special` girl with him to his matches, claims a biography of Pakistan`s celebrity cricketer-turned politician."One female undergraduate recalls having feigned an interest in the game ... just to be near him. Imran made it immediately clear to his companion that he was a man of no small ambition, displaying `brass` which impressed her," the book penned by acclaimed biographer Christopher Sandford said.

It claimed that Imran generally brought a `special` girl with him to his matches, or even to watch him practice in the Parks nets. The 402-page biography noted that 56-year-old Imran, who had studied at Oxford University, was particularly fortunate to play his cricket at the Parks, a handsome, tree-lined ground that was only a short-walk from Keble. "In the summer term his practice was to go directly from his early morning tutorial to the playing field, returning home again for a late dinner. An Oxford team-mate named Simon Porter remembers him as `more inherently gifted, obviously (but) also more driven` than his colleagues. "It wasn`t unknown for Imran to attract a `small harem` of supporters to the ground for even the most insignificant fixture," the book claimed. Another colleague remembers that, on losing his wicket in one inter-college game, Imran went straight to the area where "a blonde in a sports car was waiting for him. He jumped in, and that was the last we saw of him for two days," according to the biography. A subsequent Oxford girlfriend, another blonde now called Karen-Wishart, thought Imran a `physically beautiful` man whose charm was nonetheless limited in its scope. One evening the two of them went off together to `a little flat above a fruit and veg shop` in the Oxford suburbs. Looking back on the episode years later, Wishart was left to conclude that Imran was a `music and roses at night, pat on the bum in the morning` type, the biography said. It would be only fair to add that another woman found him an `attentive, funny and charming` partner, who nonetheless struck her as the kind who would `hug you politely and then just stroll away once you broke up`. The words proved prophetic, according to the book. The biography said Imran "has always been a controversial figure, a man who gives rise to hot debate on account of his strong convictions and hard-line-views. His story is full of colour and contradiction - the practising Muslim who was equally at home in London nightspots like Annabel`s and Tramp and campaigning among the slums of Lahore." His mother`s death prompted him to fund the first dedicated cancer hospital in Pakistan to the tune of some 5 million pounds while his well-publicised marriage to Jemima Goldsmith ended in an equally high-profile divorce, the book noted. Bureau Report