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ISLAMABAD - Roll Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali and David Beckham into one, throw in good looks, an Oxford education, and a beautiful British aristocrat wife and you get an idea of how big a deal Imran Khan once was as the captain of Pakistan's world champion cricket team.
He's rarely made news since as a politician - a rival once called him a sports hero and a political zero. But he was back in the spotlight overnight, beginning a hunger strike from the prison where he is being kept for protesting against Pakistan's military ruler.
The hunger strike is the latest twist for Khan, a one-time playboy cricket star who in the 15 years since retiring from sports has become a crusading politician and devout defender of his Muslim faith.
How much impact the strike will have is uncertain - Khan's never been able to translate his achievements in the gentlemanly game of cricket into success in the often dirty world of Pakistani politics.
But he nonetheless remains among the most instantly recognizable personalities in this cricket-obsessed country. In fact, when President Gen. Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule, Khan was among the first of his political opponents targeted for arrest.
Khan managed to slip away from his home that night more than two weeks ago. He eluded police until last week, when he was picked up and jailed after going to a pro-democracy protest in the eastern city of Lahore.
On Monday, he decided to stop eating and drinking until judges that were fired when Musharraf imposed the emergency are reinstated, said his former wife, Jemima Khan. The two have remained close since their divorce in 2004.
"He plans to keep it up until the judiciary is restored. He could get very thin," she told The Associated Press in an email from London, where she lives with the couple's two young sons.
Prison officials denied Khan was on a hunger strike, saying he just wanted media attention.
Getting the judges back on the job is one of the key demands of Pakistan's opposition, which, along with the United States, has been pressing hard for Musharraf to restore democracy.
Musharraf's purge of the courts came days before the Supreme Court was expected to decide on his eligibility to serve as president. The new court heard the case Monday and ruled in Musharraf's favour.
Khan, who's being held in a prison outside Lahore, began his hunger strike shortly after the decision was handed down, although neither his former wife nor officials in his party could say if it had been promoted by the ruling.
Noted for his good looks and ample charm, Khan's never been shy about his Western ways during his days at Oxford University and as a world class cricket player. He drank, dated society women and eventually married Jemima, a British heiress of Jewish heritage.
But by the late 1990s, a different, more devoutly religious Khan had emerged onto Pakistan's often corrupt and chaotic political scene. He'd sworn off alcohol, and presented himself as just the man to clean it up.
And he didn't stop there. At first supportive of Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup, he soon broke with the military ruler and forged ties Islamic fundamentalists.
In Pakistan's 2002 elections, he even supported a fiery, pro-Taleban cleric, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, for prime minister. The cleric is now leading hundreds of Islamic militants battling government forces northwest of Islamabad.
Khan's also taken aim at the United States, and was among the first politicians in the Muslim world to speak out about a Newsweek report that a copy of the Koran had been thrown into a toilet at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The story was later retracted, but not before violent Muslim protests broke out in neighbouring Afghanistan.
His vocal criticism of US President George W. Bush even prompted Pakistani authorities to put him under house arrest when the American leader visited the country in 2006.
Like being a former cricket star, criticising Bush plays well in Pakistan. But Khan has never managed to translate the immense popularity he earned playing cricket - he led Pakistan to its only World Cup victory in 1992 - into political power. He's currently the only member of his party to hold a seat in Pakistan's 342-seat Parliament.
AP
