‘Shah Rukh Khan arranged for a Boeing in an hour’: Wasim Akram made a special request for tired KKR players, SRK obliged

Also read – Shah Rukh Khan offered a job to Wasim Akram after his stay at rehab for cocaine addiction: ‘It made me volatile, deceptive’

Reflecting how important the KKR job was for him, especially at that stage of his life, Wasim had written about his stint in rehab in his autobiography, “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 added, “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.”

In an earlier interview, former cricketer Gautam Gambhir also reflected on his time as a member of the KKR coaching staff. He said that Shah Rukh never interfered in the strategy. “Since I have come, 20 days we haven’t spoken about cricket. We don’t talk about cricket. The first thing he told me in 2011 when I met him for the first time, he said, ‘I don’t like anybody telling me how acting needs to be done. I am sure you will not like someone telling you how cricket needs to be played’. I said, ‘Absolutely’. And that was the only conversation I had with him. In the last 20 days, he has not asked me what team are we playing or what is the strategy,” Gambhir said in a chat with Ravichander Ashwin on YouTube.