Thursday, September 28 2006 17:24 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Sports sponsorship by private sector will hopefully raise the standard of sports in Pakistan and provide entertainment to the 'entertainment-starved' population, says President Pervez Musharraf in his new book.

"We are trying to encourage the private sector to sponsor events and sports teams," says Musharraf, who calls himself 'jack-of-all-trades' sportsman in his book 'In the Line of Fire'.

"This, we hope, will attract national talent, expose people to competitive sports and improve our overall national sporting standards while providing much-needed recreational activity to the entertainment-starved population of Pakistan," Musharraf writes.

In the chapter entitled 'The Soft Image of Pakistan', Musharraf talks about how he had all the Pakistani sports bodies that "had become hotbeds of fraud and cronyism" reorganised.

"Accordingly, we restructured all the sports federations, introducing merit and efficiency into them," he says.

"We then strategised and helped to encourage an interesting, participatory, and competitive sporting system for the country, at three levels: interschool and intercollege competitions, the regional and district level and corporation-level competitions in the public and private sectors."

The Pakistani President also highlights his country's dominance in cricket, hockey, squash, bridge, amateur billiards and snooker.

Musharraf mentions the names of the legendary squash players Jahangir Khan, Hashim Khan, Jansher Khan who dominated the sport spanning several decades till the 1990s.

Terming him the best of the three players, he particularly points our Jahangir's meteoric rise despite personal tragedy.

"If Hollywood only knew his story of tragedy, grit and determination, it would make another movie like 'Chariots of Fire'," he writes.

In November 1979, Jahangir's elder brother Torsam, one of the leading international players of that time, died while playing a match in Australia.

Jahangir, who was very close to him and his father, Roshan, another squash legend, were profoundly affected by the death.

"Many of those who know him consider him the best athlete who ever lived," he says in the book.

Musharraf also admitted that Pakistan's sports achievements were at a "low ebb".

"I therefore launched a campaign to improve the situation."

Musharraf himself calls as "a sportsman of a kind".

Although he does not say so in this chapter, a recent History Channel documentary on the world's leading personalities, for which Musharraf was interviewed, the president disclosed that he pursued bodybuilding in college.