With the worsening COVID-19 situation in his family, Delhi Capitals cricketer Ravichandran Ashwin admitted that he found it pretty taxing and had to go home midway through the IPL season.
Quite a few cricketers started pulling out of tournaments for various reasons. Ravichandran Ashwin was the latest to do so as the Tamil Nadu off-spinner pulled out of the IPL 2021 after playing five games for the Delhi Capitals.
He cited personal reasons to pull out of the 14th edition of the Indian T20 extravaganza, and it came to light later that most of Ashwin’s family was battling with the deadly COVID-19 virus.
Ashwin has now come out and admitted that almost everyone from his place was diagnosed with COVID-19. He said that a few of his family members were also admitted to the hospital. Hence, he couldn’t really get sleep for about eight or nine days, and he was playing the IPL without any sleep. The 34-year-old also thought about whether he could even get back to playing cricket after pulling out of the IPL.
“Almost everyone from my place had got affected due to COVID. In fact, a few of my cousins also got admitted and were serious, and they somehow recovered. I couldn’t sleep for almost 8-9 days.
Since I couldn’t sleep, it was really stressful for me. I was playing matches without getting any sleep. And since I found it really taxing, I had to quit IPL and go home midway. In fact, when I left, around that time, I had thoughts on whether I will be able to play cricket thereafter. But still, I did what was required at that point in time,”
he was quoted saying on his YouTube channel.
Ashwin is now in quarantine in Mumbai alongside his other Indian team-mates and will fly to the United Kingdom on the 2nd of June for the upcoming World Test Championship final and the five-match Test series against England.
