It has been more than three years now but an eyewitness swears that it was the most emotional bear hug in sporting history. Kapil Dev and Wasim Akram embraced one another in a room in a Chennai hotel. Tears welled up in Akram’s eyes as his wife, Huma, had been admitted in a critical condition in a city hospital after the air ambulance flying them to Singapore had to make an emergency landing since her condition had worsened.
As the former all-rounders spoke emotionally, in chaste Punjabi, the onlookers were convinced they were watching a human drama without borders. They were two Punjabis, divided only by a barbed border, opening their hearts out. Indeed, the larger picture of our sport and sportspersons living in a paradoxical coexistence of brotherhood and rivalry was captured in that one tender moment.
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