‘Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I can assure you, it’s much more important than that.’ Bill Shankly said these words. He was a charismatic man and Liverpool Football Club's most successful manager. The quote was classic Shankly: witty, passionate, and showing his intimacy with soccer's spiritual side - his bond with fans for whom the game was more than a game.
But then, on April 15, 1989, at Hillsborough Stadium, the words came back to haunt those who had taken his statement without irony. Prior to the FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, too many Liverpool fans were packed into a particular stand. There was overcrowding, and many were crushed. In all, 96 Liverpool fans lost their lives.
It is odd to write about death when writing about sport. Sport is ultimately always life-affirming: even in despair and defeat, it makes us feel more alive. The language we use for our games - 'we murdered them,' 'bowling at the death,' 'he choked' - is often morbid, but only in the safe waters of metaphor. We can take sport dead seriously only because we know, ultimately, that it's only a bit of splashing around in the shallow end.
But then, occasionally, real life emerges, and sport is compelled to take on the deeper, darker, murkier aspects of existence. Someone gets hurt, someone dies.
Huma Akram was not a sportsperson, but by all accounts she was an invaluably positive presence in the career of Wasim Akram, one of the four or five greatest sportsmen in Pakistan's history, and probably the best left-arm fast bowler ever. Since Sunday, her story has appeared on the front page, but also on the back pages - in the domain of sport, where it belongs, for it is for her sporting connection that she is known to you and me. She is connected to sport. She is part of the family of sport. Therefore, the world of sport mourns.
Our best wishes go to Wasim and his two young sons. It is little compensation, but the left-armed magician should know that all of us who follow cricket were stunned into a bone-deep sadness when the news broke, and that sadness will linger for some time to come.
It is an occasion to take a step back, contemplate the vagaries of fate, put sport into its proper perspective, and hope that Huma Akram rests in peace, while her family finds the strength to go on.
