The above extracts from Funeral Blues by W H Auden will not console Wasim Akram, but there are bits in there that hold true about his wife Huma, who passed away in Chennai yesterday due to heart and kidney complications.

Wasim wrote in his 1998 autobiography (Piatkus Publishers): "Huma has been a rock to me in so many ways." In fact, his hypnotherapist and psychotherapist wife wrote an epilogue to the book.u00a0 "She is a good deal cleverer than me, as you're about to find out," wrote Wasim before Huma's piece on 'Coping with the Mental Pressure.'u00a0

She also helped Wasim's teammates Saeed Anwar and Saqlain Mushtaq, who were considered more than just world-class at their peak.

The couple first met at a friend's party in London, 1988 and were married five years later. Wasim says in the book that the wedding celebrations stretched to three weeks. A tour of New Zealand which Wasim didn't want to go on and play under the captaincy of Salim Malik followed. But Huma convinced him to make the trip. The atmosphere in the team was not congenial and Wasim spent his evenings with Huma. He wrote: "She kept drumming into me the importance of playing for my country rather than being its captain and that it was vital to regain my form.

"I took 25 wickets in three Tests, including two man-of -the-match awards."

Once in Sharjah, Wasim ignored Pakistan Cricket Board authorities who prevented players from bringing along their wives on tour.

Going by what Wasim says in his book, he would have given up the game prematurely had it not been for Huma's influence. In 1997, he reached a stage where he couldn't lift his left shoulder. He writes, "I was taking eight painkillers a day, losing weight and couldn't face food. I thought my career was in jeopardy, but my wife Huma, is such a positive person that she insisted I should look at the pluses: that my body was resting and that I'd be raring to go once the operation succeeded."