Pakistan’s Sport

LEAD: On a warm day, when the rains have cleared the air, many boys might be out kicking around a soccer ball. In Sialkot, where sporting goods are a cottage industry, Shahid Amanatulli and many of his friends sit in the shade with a master craftsman learning how to stitch a ball.

On a warm day, when the rains have cleared the air, many boys might be out kicking around a soccer ball. In Sialkot, where sporting goods are a cottage industry, Shahid Amanatulli and many of his friends sit in the shade with a master craftsman learning how to stitch a ball.

The roar of the crowds from the 1990 World Cup matches in Italy have died away, but the confetti is still falling on this corner of Pakistan in the form of orders for soccer balls.

''It happens every four years,'' Khawaja Javaid Akhtar, the general manager of the Capital Sports Corporation, said in his office here. ''After the World Cup craze, we get heavy orders.''

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How Sialkot propelled itself into the center of the sports equipment world is a story of self-help in the face of limited resources.

A city of 296,000 people close to the border with Jammu and Kashmir state in India, Sialkot is in a rich agricultural area, but much of the land is owned by absentee landlords, leaving little opportunity for independent farming. When British India was divided in 1947, many Moslem Kashmiris flocked here, adding to the employment pool, but also bringing with them a high level of skills in handicrafts, including leatherwork.

An existing cottage industry in leather balls was strengthened and expanded by the Kashmiris. Mr. Akhtar, whose family came from Srinagar, in the Kashmir Valley, said it was his uncle's