Akash Deep just delivered the performance of his life in India's biggest-ever Test win away from home. But the story behind it will leave a tear in your eye. Beyond the numbers, he carried something heavier, and that was revealed when he dedicated his 10-wicket match-haul to his sister, who's battling cancer. After taking a stunning haul at Edgbaston, Akash didn't talk records; he talked family, his sister, who is bravely battling cancer, and Akash's every ball was for her. This wasn't just cricket. This was love, pain, and power rolled into one spell. "She’s finally stable now, but she suffered a lot in the last two months,” Akash revealed after the match. “This was for her. Every time I sprinted in, her face came to my mind. Today, I want a smile on her face,” he said. Hailing from Sasaram, Bihar, Akash's rise to the big stage has been anything but easy. Once playing tennis-ball cricket to make ends meet, his journey took shape after moving to Durgapur in 2010 in search of work. It was there, with the support of his uncle, that Akash and his cousin enrolled in a local cricket academy, where his raw pace began turning heads. But tragedy struck soon after for the son of a government school teacher, and those were trying times for Akash Deep. "My father (Ramji Singh) had a stroke and then he passed away after a brief struggle with paralysis three years ago," Akash Deep remembers. "Two months after his death, my older brother passed away. He had a common cold and fever. It hadn't come down for a few days, and we went to a doctor, who didn't diagnose the problem properly. We had to go to Banaras [Varanasi] for treatment, and he died on the way. I was emotionally and mentally down. There was no money in the house, I had my mother to take care of," he had told Espncricinfo.com. Akash took a three-year break from cricket to piece his life back together. Since then, his journey from obscurity to outclassing England's top order—including the likes of Joe Root and Ben Duckett—has been nothing short of inspirational. On Sunday, as India celebrated a rare win at Edgbaston, Akash stood tall—not just as a match-winner, but as a brother, a son, and a fighter.