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Wasim Akram was perhaps the fastest and most destructive left-arm bowler the world has seen. However, none of this was obvious in his boyhood.
Gleaned from the net:
"Wasim Akram was born in Lahore on June 3, 1966, to a moderately affluent middle-class family, in which his father was mostly concerned with his son's happiness rather than his success. His mother was the more ambitious for him, but her thoughts hardly embraced professional sport. They sent him to the fee-paying Cathedral School in Lahore, where all the lessons, other than Urdu, were conducted in English. In the tradition of the English public school, the Cathedral's scholars were expected to play games. Wasim, dreaming of the feats of Zaheer Abbas, Asif Iqbal and Mushtaq Mohammad, needed no urging to play cricket.
At 12 he was opening the bowling and batting for the school team. At 15 he was captain, his whole life consumed by cricket, at school, in nets at home, in the garage with his brother, and in street games played with a tennis ball. These matches were played of an evening in the lanes of old Lahore. As many as ten or more teams would compete in a tournament, each side contributing an entry fee, the eventual winners scooping the pool. It was fast, intensely competitive, as much a test of eyesight, reactions and stamina as ability."
(To be continued)
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