Sir Andy Murray’s voice cracked with emotion and he had to pause as he responded to the experiences of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe while she was detained in Iran. Sir Andy said Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s story of watching him win Wimbledon in 2016 from her prison cell was “by far the strangest, most incredible story I’ve been told” about someone viewing him play tennis.
Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe recalled playing an Iranian version of Charades when held in a hospital ward, explaining on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “My friends knew that on my list there had to be Andy Murray.
“The people who were with me in that period they knew you even though they’d probably never heard your name before, they knew who you were, which game you won and that was quite something for me – it felt like a connection, it felt like escape, I was close to home all of a sudden and that was through sport, and through something that probably the Iranian government never thought that I would have that way of finding my way and connection to the life I had outside prison.”
