Chennai, Oct. 25: Huma Akram, 42-year-old wife of Wasim Akram, died of cardiac arrest and septic shock at the Apollo Hospital in the city on Sunday morning. Her body was flown out of the city in the evening after being embalmed.

There was to be no happy ending to the extraordinary and emotional tale of the wife of a Pakistan cricket captain being hosptialised in India when she was in transit in an air ambulance en route to Singapore for treatment.

Her battle for life in the city hospital ever since she had a multiple organ failure soon after admission and was resuscitated on the day of admission (Tuesday) was to be an ill-fated one.

Akram, who acknowledged the help given by India in the emergency situation when the air ambulance stopped to refuel at Meenambakkam, and his relatives were much more hopeful than the doctors who knew they had a gravely-ill patient in a life-threatening condition of sepsis (an inflammation of tissues, including blood) in critical care over the last six days.

Some signs led to the rebirth of hope as Huma, a practising parental psychologist in Lahore, was taken for brief periods off the ventilator on Friday and she was just about able to breathe on her own. But the absence of clear brain activity meant that the doctors had a huge fight against the odds.

While meeting Kapil Dev who called on him in Chennai on Wednesday to express his sympathies and wish his wife a speedy recovery, Akram had hinted that doctors had taken too long to come to a prognosis in Lahore. Also, that they were simply told to head to the Mount Elizabeth hospital in Singapore without being told what exactly Huma was suffering from.

Akram had been wary of speaking in detail on Huma’s medical condition to the media only because he did not want his very young sons, Taimur and Akbar, to learn of their mother’s critical condition through the media.

As the grim scenario unfolded, Akram could not even get in a few words to his beloved wife who stayed in coma and died without regaining consciousness.

As a highly regarded cricket commentator, Akram has many ties to India. He has also been helping out Kolkata Knight Riders as bowling coach in certain programmes run in the off season by the IPL team.

There had been a silly controversy over whether the Indian government had denied him a place in the commentary box for the Champions League that was played recently. In Chennai, Akram had been generous in praise of everyone who had tried to help as Huma lay in hospital in an alien land, most of all of the Indian government which came up with emergency visas in a trice.