Occasionally in this job, you meet someone extraordinary. And they’re not always the fastest or the strongest, their voices not always the most booming. Last Friday, 17-year-old Faizah Hashmi walked to the front of the lecture theatre at Huddersfield University for the Women in Sport North Awards, smiled, and told the room how nervous she was. She paused, took a deep breath, and spoke: “Many of you may have heard of the proverb or saying ‘the calm after the storm’. It signifies the period in one’s life or situation during which things improve after a difficult, chaotic or stressful time.
“I believe in the Qur’an, every line, every sentence can be dissected into deeper meaning. ‘Verily with hardship comes ease’ … This is my story of how cricket saved my life.” For five or six minutes, the room listened in stillness as she nakedly, lyrically, described her descent into anorexia. The angry despair, the endless fight, the guilt and the secret pleasure, the lies and the secrecy, and then her path away from its clutches.
Written by Tanya Aldred
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2019/nov/14/cricket-teenage-girl-way-out-times-of-darkness-faizah-hashmi under the title “Cricket offers one teenage girl a way out from times of darkness | Tanya Aldred”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
