Imran offers sober advice

Press, 13 September 1988, Page 22

Imran offers sober advice

NZPA-PA London The cricketing superstar, Imran Khan, told his fellow players — stay sober and single if you want to reach the top. The 35-year-old former Pakistan captain, who is retiring from the game after a spectacular 15-year career, said: “Cricket and alcohol just don’t mix.

“It’s bound to affect your reflexes and, to my mind, cricket and marriage don’t work, either.”

The teetotal bachelor said in last week’s “Woman’s World” magazine: “Wives of cricketers really suffer. “The travelling and uncertainty of that life doesn’t let you do justice to a wife and children and, of course, there’s always a lot of temptation as cricket does attract a kind of glamour,” he said. Imran hits out at two-, timing cricketing husbands: “I have seen

married men go wild after being with the same woman for so long. “They* make the customary phone call to the wife, then put their conscience to bed and go berserk. There are a few exceptions, but bachelors are far more discriminating.” The man regarded as one of the world’s most eligible bachelors said he was unlikely to marry. “I think about marriage when I consider children, but then I ban it from my mind,” he said.

“You see, a man has failed in life if his marriage breaks up.”

In his home country, arranged marriages are the norm, but there are no plans for Imran’s family to find him a wife.

“I have got four sisters, none of whom can agree on a suitable woman for me, so I am never faced with a choice,” he said.