The first was George Weah, the ex-footballer, who has been President of Liberia since January 22.

Though both were athletes of the highest calibre, Weah and Imran are far from trailblazers in this arresting career-path.

Former Ferrari Formula One driver Carlos Reutemann was elected Governor of the province of Santa Fe in Argentina as long ago as 1991.

In the United States, 6ft 5in former basketball pro Bill Bradley won a seat in the Senate, aged just 35, in 1979.

Seb Coe became a British Member of Parliament in 1992, more than two decades before assuming the top job in his chosen sport of athletics, as President of the International Association of Athletics Federations.

Today, other well-known athletes-turned-mainstream politicians include boxers Manny Pacquiao and Vitali Klitschko, the former a Senator in his native Philippines, the latter Mayor of Kyiv, and Romário, a brilliant striker for the Brazil football team who was elected Senator in 2014.

So this is not new territory.

Nonetheless, it is, I think, a developing trend: we can expect to see more and more of our one-time sporting heroes - and heroines - acquiring real mainstream political power as we lurch deeper into the 21st century.

Why? Is there something about the privations and pressures of an elite sports competitor's life that prepares her for the weight of high office?

Er, no. Or to be more precise, while bits and pieces of the top athlete's skill-set might help - powers of endurance and self-control; the ability to express oneself effectively in public - that is not, alas, why the phenomenon of the athlete-politician is set to become more and more widespread.

Instead the impetus will come, I fancy, from the democratisation of media that has taken place in recent years.

As household names and, in a few cases, worldwide brands with images burnished by superlative feats on the field of play, frequently in national colours, sports stars are ideally placed to exploit the ability that social media affords to communicate direct with the adoring masses.

Often this power is used to commercial ends; but it can lend itself just as easily to promoting a political agenda.

This might mean a big-name sports star simply endorsing the platform of an established political figure or vehicle.

But it might mean more than that: the rise of Emmanuel Macron in France has demonstrated the capacity of a more or less complete newcomer, albeit not a former athlete, to seize the popular imagination - and, hence, power - in the right circumstances, even in a relatively well-established democratic system.

Ironically, new media might actually open a way for current sports stars to exercise more influence over society at large than their own sports, where athletes' commissions still rarely have much real clout for all the lip service they have started to receive.

The film director Stephen Frears had evidently cottoned onto the privileged position now occupied by athletes when I spoke to him nearly four years ago.

"The William Morris agency earlier this year bought IMG," he told me over a citron pressé in Monte Carlo.

"So William Morris know that sportsmen are now bigger than film stars."

Over the past couple of generations, indeed, one might argue, democracy has turned from military leaders (Eisenhower, de Gaulle) to film stars (Reagan, Schwarzenegger) to sports stars (Weah, Imran) in pursuit of new champions.

Does that constitute progress? I wonder.

Meanwhile, spare a thought for those sports leaders who might want to leverage the growing wealth and prominence of the sector to enhance their own influence in more general political or diplomatic affairs.

Issues such as doping, sub-optimal governance and the perceived cost-benefit equation of hosting some sports events have left them bogged down by calls to get their own house in order.

In the meantime, some of those for whom sport has acted serendipitously as a passport to stardom are tasting real power.