Tim Seifert Breaks Down While Narrating His Covid-19 Ordeal In India

New Zealand wicketkeeper-batsman Tim Seifert’s heart ‘sank’ when he found out that he has returned positive for the Wuhan virus after he had reached Delhi from Ahmedabad to board a chartered flight to his home country on May 07, three days after IPL 2021 was suspended indefinitely due to multiple Covid positive cases across four different franchises.

Seifert was a part of the Kolkata Knight Riders squad, a franchise that was the first to report Covid cases in the form of Varun Chakravarthy and Sandeep Warrier.

Due to him testing positive for Covid, Tim Seifert had to stay back in India even as his New Zealand teammates boarded the chartered flight to return back home.

Seifert was treated at a local hospital in Chennai alongside CSK mentor Mike Hussey.

The Kiwi cricketer recently broke down while narrating his ordeal in India during a video conference with the media. He, however, stated that the arrangements made by the BCCI were top class.

“I had a tiny cough, at the time I thought it was just a bit of asthma. My heart sank straight away, really. I just went up to my room while everything kind of got sorted out,” Tim Seifert said as quoted by India Today.

“The world kind of stops a little bit. I just couldn’t really think what was next. And that was the scary part of it. You hear about the bad things, and I thought that was going to happen to me.” he added.

With the media constantly showing reports on how people in India are grappling with the lack of medical equipment, Tim Seifert admitted that he started fearing for the worst.

“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.” he revealed.

McCullum and Fleming made everything a lot easier: Tim Seifert

Seifert, however, revealed that KKR coach Brendon McCullum and CSK coach Stephen Fleming provided a world of support to him as they kept updating his family besides sending him positive messages.

”They (McCullum and Fleming) made everything a lot easier. They made sure that things would be put in place and the CSK management and CEO of Kolkata Knight Riders, they made life easy for me to know that everything would be alright and when that time was to come home, they’d try everything to get me home safely,” he revealed.

“It was definitely hard getting told but once a few days had gone by and everything had calmed down a bit… I just knew it was about getting through it and thinking of the positives,” he said.

Interestingly, Tim Seifert is slated to get married in two months time and his fiance is relieved that he has got back home in time to help with the preparations.

Seifert headed back home from Chennai on May 18 after testing negative and he is currently serving mandatory quarantine in New Zealand.

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