
Wasim Akram, the legendary Pakistan fast bowler, recalled an upsetting story from 2009 involving his wife Huma Akram, who died in a Chennai hospital in October after apparently having heart and kidney difficulties.
Akram shared a tale in which he was flying to Singapore and his wife was unconscious when the plane was forced to land at the Chennai airport for scheduled refuelling. He described how officials in Chennai assisted him in transporting his wife to the hospital despite the fact that he did not have an Indian visa.
“I was flying to Singapore with my late wife and there was a stopover in Chennai for refuelling. When we landed, she was unconscious, I was crying and people recognised me at the airport. We didn’t have an Indian visa. We both had Pakistani passports,” Akram told Sportstar magazine during a discussion on his autobiography ‘Sultan: A Memoir’.
“The people at the Chennai airport, the security staff, and the customs and immigration officials told me not to worry about the visa and take my wife to the hospital while they sorted the visa out. That is something I will never forget, as a cricketer and as a human being,” he revealed.
He also went back in time to the 1999 Chennai Test.
“The Chennai Test is very special to me… It was very hot, and the pitch was bare, which suited us because we relied on reverse-swing. We also had one of the best spinners at the time in Saqlain Mushtaq. Nobody could pick the doosra delivery that he had invented at the time.
“Sachin (Tendulkar) played him well after the first innings. Every time he bowled the doosra, Sachin went for the lap shot just behind the ‘keeper. A very odd shot to play against the off spinners doosra but he mastered it and that’s why Sachin was one of the greatest of all time,” he said.
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