The 2021 Indian Premier League (IPL) is a one-of-a-kind edition as it has been played in two halves over the course of six months. The first part of the tournament took place in India during the months of April and May while the second leg has been held in the UAE over the last month
However, this was an outcome the tournament’s organisers had to take by compulsion rather than choice as the tournament had to be suspended with a major outbreak of COVID-19 among players and staff across the eight teams. The chain of cases began with Varun Chakravarthy reporting a positive test on 2nd May.
The mystery spinner has finally broken his silence on his ordeal with the disease. In a video posted by Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) on the occasion of world mental health day, he spoke about the abuse he received in the wake of his diagnosis which led to the tournament’s stoppage.
Chakravarthy claimed people texted him saying he should rather have been dead. He said, “I remember when Dr. Srikanth just called and I still remember the words he told me, it’s unfortunately positive Varun. So that just shattered everything. I really didn’t know that it is going to blow up so much. I even got emails and messages on Instagram where people told me “Rather you should have been dead.”
The franchises’ assistant coach Abhishek Nayar added, “But I felt that is ridiculous. You know to go back and blame someone, a guy like Varun who is anyway so intense and takes things so seriously in life. I feel a little empathy was required. And I felt it was taken very wrongly.”
Meanwhile, former KKR skipper Dinesh Karthik opened up on the issue of trolling on social media and its ill effects on an individual’s mind. “And that’s where I feel sometimes social media needs to be a kinder place. People don’t realize the gravity of what they say. Be it memes, be it videos, be it you know just the use of words. It is a spur of the moment thing for them at that point of time instinctively what they feel, they just put it out there, not realizing what the person reading it will go through,” said Karthik.
After Chakravarthy, his teammates Sandeep Warrier, Prasidh Krishna, and Tim Seifert had also contacted the virus. On the other hand, Chennai Super Kings coaches Lakshmipati Balaji and Micheal Hussey were also infected while Delhi Capital’s Amit Mishra and Sunrisers Hyderabad’s Wriddhiman Saha also returned a positive COVID-19 test.
