New Zealand wicketkeeper-batsman broke down as he spoke of his struggle of dealing with a positive COVID-19 test just after the Indian Premier League 2021 was suspended.
Seifert, who was part of the Kolkata Knight Riders camp, was hoping to travel back home with the rest of the New Zealand contingent once the IPL 2021 was postponed on May 4.
However, just a few hours before the scheduled departure, Seifert gave a positive test and had to enter another phase of quarantine in India.
“I got pulled aside and told I had tested positive and my heart sank straightaway when everyone left,”
Seifert was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz, recalling his horrible experience from a hotel in Auckland where is now isolated.
“I was the only overseas player basically still left in India out of the whole tournament. That’s when things got a little bit real. My room looked over the entrance of the hotel so when they were leaving I was waving goodbye to them.”
Seifert, who has played 3 ODIs and 35 T20Is for New Zealand, said he felt genuinely scared at one stage, given his condition at a time when India is experiencing the devastating effects of the second wave of the pandemic. The wave has led to a shortage of beds and oxygen supply to needy patients within the country.
“The world stops a little bit, I just couldn’t really think what was next and that’s the scary part of it – you hear about things, and I thought that was going to happen to me,”
“The news is all about a lack of oxygen, you don’t know if you’re going to be in that situation. It’s just the whole unknown of what Covid is, how you’re going to react to it. I was healthy. I had the energy to get out of bed. I was happy with the situations and plans.”
Seifert said.
Seifert thanked Brendon McCullum and Stephen Fleming, as his fellow countrymen and head coaches of KKR and CSK, respectively, made arrangements for his safe stay in Chennai before he could fly back home.
“It definitely was hard and I couldn’t thank Brendon and Fleming enough, they made everything a lot easier.
Making sure things would be put in place and the KKR, the CSK support staff, management, CEO of KKR – they made life easy for me to know that everything would be alright and when that time was to come home, they would do everything to get me home safely and on time.”
he said
Despite going through what he did, however, Seifert had nothing bad to say about the IPL bubble, which many accused of being compromised the moment the league’s 14th edition was brought to a halt.
Feeling more upbeat now, Seifert also confirmed that he is about to get married in a couple of months and is feeling “excited” about the beginning of new innings in life with his partner.
Seifert’s KKR, the two-time champions, won only 2 and lost 5 of their seven league fixtures before the tournament was ultimately suspended by the BCCI and IPL governing council.
The Indian board had to arrive at its tough call, keeping in mind a surge of COVID-19 positive cases inside different teams’ bubbles in Delhi and Ahmedabad. KKR alone had two of their players – Sandeep Warrier and Varun Chakravarthy – proving affected by the contagious virus.
Speculations have been rife around the potential resumption of IPL 2021, with reports circulating that the remainder of the tournament could be held in a new window in September-October – just after India’s long Test tour of England and prior to the T20 World Cup, scheduled to be held in India.
