Shah Rukh Khan bought his cricket team, Kolkata Knight Riders, in 2008 and after three IPL wins, he continues to own one of the most popular teams of the country. During its initial seasons, Shah Rukh Khan’s team offered an “attractive job” to cricketer Wasim Akram as the bowling coach of the team. But, just before Wasim found this job, which was his “first senior coaching role anywhere”, he was at a rehabilitation centre for drug addiction in Lahore.
In his memoir titled Sultan, Wasim opened up about this chapter of his life and said that the excessive partying, after his career as a cricketer was over, took a toll on him and he “developed a dependence on cocaine.” “It started innocuously enough when I was offered a line at a party in England, but my use grew steadily more serious, to the point that I felt I needed it to function. It made me volatile. It made me deceptive,” he wrote. Wasim recognised that his wife Huma was “often lonely” at this time and expressed her desire to move to Karachi to be closer to her family, as they were spending majority of their time in Manchester and Lahore, but Wasim wouldn’t let her as he would go to Karachi on the pretext of work, and spend days partying.
When Huma caught Wasim with cocaine, she told him to go to a rehabilitation centre and in his words, he “tried.” “Movies conjure up an image of rehab as a caring, nurturing environment. This facility in Lahore was brutal: a bare building with five cells, a meeting room and a kitchen,” he wrote. Wasim realised that the doctor was a “con man who worked primarily on manipulating families rather than treating patients” and was charging over Rs 2 lakh per week.
Wasim said that he stayed there for seven weeks to keep his end of the bargain and by this time, even his wife could see that the doctor was a “scam artist.” Once he was out, his life started to change after he got a job offer from Shah Rukh Khan. “Once out, I tried to keep calm, to get centred. Shah Rukh Khan offered me an attractive job as the bowling coach at Kolkata Knight Riders – my first senior coaching role anywhere.” Akram was hired as KKR’s bowling coach in 2010 but had to leave in 2015 after Pakistani cricketers were prohibited to participate in IPL.
